BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Alivio Therapeutics, an affiliate of PureTech Health plc (LSE: PRTC) developing therapies to treat inflammatory disorders through targeted disease immunomodulation, today announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued U.S. Patent Nos. 9,962,339 and 9,974,859, related to the Company’s inflammation-targeting technology platform. The patents, among other aspects, broadly cover compositions of matter of the inflammation-targeting microfiber materials with embedded molecules of interest. The platform is being evaluated for use across a variety of diseases, including inflammatory bowel disease and pain.
The now patented technology is designed to administer therapeutically-relevant molecules, such as small molecules, biologics (e.g., antibodies, peptides, and proteins), and nucleic acids, directly to site of inflammation, bypassing healthy tissue. The Alivio technology is also engineered to respond dynamically to the disease site, releasing the embedded therapeutics based on the degree of inflammation present. This novel approach has the potential to enable new paradigms for treating inflammatory disease – both orally and via other administration routes – while simultaneously minimizing the risks of exposing healthy tissue to potent immunomodulators.
“The USPTO’s allowance of these broad claims is an independent acknowledgment of the uniqueness of the technology and lays a strong foundation for our intellectual property portfolio,” said Aleks Radovic-Moreno, Ph.D., PureTech Health Vice President and Alivio program lead. “Based on compelling preclinical data in several independent disease models, we are developing potentially important new drugs for a range of chronic and acute inflammatory diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease, arthritis, and interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome.”
The relevant intellectual property is exclusively licensed to Alivio Therapeutics and is based on technology developed by Jeffrey Karp, Ph.D., Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH), Harvard Medical School (HMS), and Robert Langer, Sc.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The pioneering work of Dr. Karp, Dr. Langer, and their colleagues has demonstrated selective modulation of the immune system at the site of disease in relevant preclinical models using therapeutic agents embedded in the Alivio microfibers. Alivio is now advancing this promising inflammation-targeting technology platform and building a robust pipeline with the goal of achieving targeted disease immunomodulation to address a number of targeted therapies for treating chronic and acute inflammatory diseases.
In April 2018, a preclinical study of Alivio’s technology platform was published in Nature Communications, demonstrating proof-of-concept that an immunomodulatory drug, administered locally using the Alivio technology, substantially reduced measures of arthritis disease activity, with a 5.7-fold improvement in the disease clinical score vs. control, as compared to only 1.4-fold for the free drug. In July 2017, Alivio presented data for product candidate ALV-107 showing durable pain control throughout a 24-hour study period, lasting at least 12 times longer than lidocaine at a comparable dose, in a validated preclinical model for the treatment of interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome (IC/BPS).
About Alivio
Alivio Therapeutics, an affiliate of PureTech
Health (PRTC.L), is pioneering targeted disease immunomodulation as a
novel strategy to treat a range of chronic and acute inflammatory
disorders. Targeted disease immunomodulation involves tuning the immune
system exclusively at the site of disease in the body, with minimal
impact on the rest of the immune system. This long sought-after approach
has potential to treat a range of chronic and acute inflammatory
disorders including ones that would otherwise be difficult to treat.
Alivio’s proprietary inflammation-targeting technology, based on the
research of Dr. Karp and Dr. Robert Langer, David H. Koch Institute
Professor at MIT, is the first technology to reproducibly show the
ability to target immunomodulatory compounds to inflamed tissue, which
can lead to dramatic improvements in treatment efficacy with major
reductions in systemic effects. The platform has been validated in
multiple labs and in eight different animal models of inflammation where
the inflammation occurred in different parts of the body (e.g., the GI
system, the bladder, joints, skin, etc.). The technology could
potentially be used with a variety of medications (e.g., small
molecules, biologics, and nucleic acids) both independently or in
combination, and is designed to be administered orally or via other
routes. With this platform, Alivio aims to address the dozens of
conditions where inflammation is a central part of the underlying
disease pathology, but where targeted and effective treatment options
are lacking.
Alivio is developing its proprietary technology in collaboration with several of the world’s leading experts in biomaterials and immunology. Expert advisors include: Jeffrey Karp, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Alivio co-founder; Robert Langer, Sc.D., Co-Alivio Founder and Non-Executive Director at PureTech Health and David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT; Michael B. Brenner, M.D., Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Immunology and Allergy at BWH; Ulrich H. von Andrian, M.D., Ph.D., Mallinckrodt Professor of Immunopathology at Harvard Medical School; and Ralph Weissleder, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Center for Systems Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
