We are redefining medicine for autoimmune disease by genetically pre-selecting patients for correspondingly designed targeted therapy.
We aim to transform lives by advancing patient-centric therapies to the clinic and impacting the way medicine is practiced in treating autoimmune disease.
The development of HLA-specific drugs allows clinical trials and eventually clinical treatment to select patients based on the presence of specific HLA gene variants. These variants are known to be high-risk and easy to test. Examples are DQ8 in type 1 diabetes and DQ2 for celiac disease among others such as DR3 and DR4 for a range of other autoimmune conditions. As has been well-established in other disease areas, marker-based preselection of patients and corresponding targeted therapy promises a higher chance of drug approval and high responders among patients. The design of drug development specific to an HLA also would help minimize side effects potentially resulting from off-target effects and interactions with other immune receptors.
We believe that our paradigm of therapeutic development has the potential for disease prevention by blocking autoimmune response that could likely occur in high-risk patients.
