OTTAWA, Ontario & MONTREAL, Québec--(BUSINESS WIRE)--JN Nova Pharma is a private Canadian biotech company which has worked with an interdisciplinary team of researchers from the National Research Council of Canada’s (NRC) Human Health Therapeutics Research Centre over the past year to develop a promising anti-COVID-19 biotherapeutic with enhanced protection for vulnerable patients.
This research is supported through the NRC’s Pandemic Response Challenge program, as well as advisory services and research and development funding from the NRC Industrial Research Assistance Program (NRC IRAP).
JN Nova Pharma is pleased to announce that its leading biological drug candidate, JN2019, is capable of binding and neutralizing all SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern that have emerged throughout the pandemic thus far. The drug candidate will be clinically tested for use in people that are infected by these vaccine- and/or prior-infection escape mutants, such as Delta, Omicron and other emerging variants in the future.
“We are very excited about the highly effective profile of our leading drug candidate and extremely optimistic that JN2019 will become the ideal therapeutic solution to treat symptomatic patients and prevent long-term complications from SARS-CoV-2 infections” said Dr. John Gillard, Chief Executive Officer of JN Nova Pharma Inc.
Our lead therapeutic molecule, JN2019, traps and inhibits viral entry to the lungs/airways via an enhanced ACE2 decoy. By mimicking the body’s natural receptor, but with increased affinity for the viral spike protein, it can capture all SARS-CoV-2 variants, which must all bind to the ACE2 extracellular domain to enter the human cells. This mechanism avoids any minor changes in the virus which can elude the immune system, whether induced by vaccines or previous infections.
The drug also has full ACE2 enzyme activity, designed to replace the virally induced lost ACE2 enzyme. This drug mechanism is intended to provide protection from organ failure such as acute kidney injury (AKI) and enhanced recovery from acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), which occur in >20% of all ICU admissions and AKI is the leading cause of death among COVID-19 patients.
JN Nova will be conducting clinical studies in Canada to provide this novel biotherapeutic to Canadians. By being extremely potent against all emergent viral variants, drugs will be developed to be rapidly administered as therapeutic interventions in symptomatic pre-hospitalized and early symptomatic hospitalized patients.
“JN Nova Pharma is actively seeking to establish strategic partnerships with international partners for the establishment of a global commercialisation strategy” stated Dr. Nathan Yoganathan, Chief Scientific Officer of JN Nova Pharma.