Delivering local immunotherapies to patients
Delivering local immunotherapies to patients
Beyondbiotech August episode 11, Rounding up news of the week and interviewing interesting companies - Yes also Ilya Pharma - please hear our CEO Evelina Vågesjö and CFO Oskar Lund give an update and share some details around the latests patents approved - at 29:50 to 43:00.
Ilya Pharma, being a clinical stage biopharmaceutical development company is currently pursuing three clinical programs drug candidates from its proprietary ILP-technology platform.
The research is inspired by the early work of Professor Ilya Mechnicov who also received the Nobel Prize in 1908, describing immune cells have multiple function in vivo, read more here.
Well known, biochemically instable, human therapeutic proteins are produced at the actual affected by live lactic acid bacteria acting as local mini-bioreactors. This provides a new and cost-effective way to deliver therapeutic proteins and enables development of a wide range of immunomodulatory proteins that are not suited to be developed as biologics.
The drug candidates are classified as ATMP and gene therapies by the EMA and FDA.
The innovation now, being a validated ILP-technology platform, originally stems from cutting edge medical research in immunophysiology and applied microbiology at Uppsala University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. The different ILP-drug candidates uses the function of tissue-resident immune cells in different organs to treat disease and the ILP-candidates are local-acting immunotherapies.
Unmet clinical needs targeted are diseases in skin and mucosal surfaces.
ILP100-Topical:A first-in-human clinical trial (WHILYAS1, EudraCT No. 2019000680-24) have been successfully completed and reported.
An IND for a pivotal adaptive phase 2 clinical trial in treatment of wound following breast surgery have been granted and patients with pre-diabetes, diabetes and obesity having weeks to months longer healing time and increased complications, will be included.
A phase IIa study (WHILYAS2) in patients with diabetes and chronic wounds, funded by the EIC Accelerator is approved ans first dosing is expected in 2021.
ILP100-Oral: 30-40% of cancer patients receiving treatment witch checkpoint inhibitors (aPD1, aPDL1, aCTLA-4) have to discontinues treatment due to severe colitis developed as an immune related adverse event (irAE). The company are currently performing IND-enabling studies and expect to be able to start a first clinical trial in patients with ICI-induced colitis in 12-18 months.
Ilya Pharma is today financed by a mix of grants and private funding. The company received a H2020 SME Instrument phase II grant 2018 of 3 MEUR and EIC Accelerator 2020 of 5.3 MEUR. The company is currently raising for the continued clinical development in phase IIs and IND enabling studies in ICI-induced colitis from suitable investors and potential partners with proven track record in cell- and gene therapy and therapeutics.
