Current Scenario

Chronic inflammatory diseases represent the greatest collective burden of suffering and economic cost in the developed world affecting one-in-three people and causing hundreds of billions of Pounds to be incurred annually in healthcare costs.

Many of the therapies currently available for inflammatory disorders treat only the symptoms of the disease, and not the underlying cause of inflammation. Although inflammation is the unifying factor among diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, asthma and psoriasis, the treatment approach required for each type of inflammatory disease is often unique. Inflammation therefore represents a wide range of diseases with individual needs. 

Aquapharm

Aquapharm is currently screening its marine microbe collection for new chemical entities that will inhibit specific cytokines and combinations of cytokines in the nuclear transcription factor, NF-kB, pathway including IL-17, TNF-a and IL-6. 

Small-molecule inhibitors of the pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-17 are a particular priority. IL-17 promotes inflammation by inducing various pro-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, recruiting neutrophils, enhancing antibody production, and activating T cells. IL-17 expression is also augmented in autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel disease and psoriasis. Models of these diseases have shown that IL-17 plays a central role in their development and it therefore represents an attractive therapeutic target for Aquapharm.  

To date, the vast majority of pharmaceuticals developed to treat disease through the modulation of cytokines have been "biologics" - i.e. therapeutic proteins such as antibodies. Whilst these can be very effective, they are expensive to produce and typically need to be injected. Aquapharm believes that compounds produced by its marine micro-organisms can achieve comparable or superior efficacy and safety to biologics in inhibiting cytokines whilst being much cheaper to produce and administered as oral treatments.