GRONINGEN, The Netherlands--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Lanthio Pharma B.V., the biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing lanthipeptides, announced today that it has been awarded an Innovation Credit loan of up to €3.6 million by Dutch Government agency RVO. The Innovation Credit loan will support the development of LP2, an innovative lanthipeptide for treatment of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.
LP2 is the first peptide-based drug to selectively activate the Angiotensin type 2 (AT2) receptor of the Renin Angiotensin System (RAS). The natural role of the AT2 receptor is to protect damaged tissue against inflammation and fibrosis. Once safety and efficacy of LP2 is established in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis patients, application of LP2 could be extended to many other forms of fibrosis, including renal fibrosis, heart fibrosis and liver fibrosis.
The Innovation Credit loan is made available by Dutch Government agency RVO to stimulate innovative drug development in The Netherlands. The loan is risk bearing and will be matched by Lanthio Pharma’s investors. The loan covers up to 35% of development costs through to completion of Phase II human Proof of Concept trials.
Bart Wuurman, CEO of Lanthio Pharma commented: “We are very pleased with this support by the Dutch Government to help us develop our fibrosis drug. We are keen to show that LP2 is effective against Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, a life threatening disease for which effective treatments are not yet available.”
NOTES TO EDITORS
About Lanthio Pharma (www.lanthiopharma.com)
Lanthio Pharma is a privately held drug discovery company that applies its proprietary lanthionine-peptide technology to the discovery of novel peptide therapeutics with longer half-life and high receptor selectivity. Lanthio Pharma has already discovered several lanthipeptides for a number of GPCR targets, which is a focus area of the company.
Constrained peptides like lanthipeptides are an emerging compound class which offers the potential to address many types of target and disease categories, currently beyond reach for therapeutic proteins or small molecules. Lanthio Pharma is building a pipeline of therapeutic lanthipeptide drugs against diseases of high medical interest, like fibrosis, cardiovascular diseases, multiple sclerosis and cancer.
The technology of Lanthio Pharma includes a proprietary bacterial display library capability, which allows construction of focused or randomized libraries of lanthipeptides that can be screened against disease targets of interest. MorphoSys AG has obtained the rights to commercialize Lanthio’s technology.
Lanthio Pharma is funded by Inkef Capital, BioGeneration Ventures, MorphoSys and RUG Holding.
About Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF)
IPF is an orphan, life-threatening lung disease characterized by fibrosis and scarring of the lung tissue. Replacement of normal lung tissue by scar tissue results in restriction in the ability of the lungs to transfer oxygen from inhaled air into the bloodstream. It is estimated that IPF affects approximately 130,000 patients in the US and approximately 76,000 patients in Europe. There is no curative therapy.
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