Inflammatory Disorders
Anti-Complement – Catalyst Biosciences
Catalyst’s inflammation program is focused on a key activation component of inflammation, the complement cascade. A cascade of multiple inflammatory mediators working in concert characterizes inflammation in ocular (including age-related macular degeneration, or AMD), cardiovascular and several other diseases, such as asthma and autoimmune disorders. The complement cascade is naturally regulated by proteases. Importantly, many of the relevant drug targets within the complement cascade are found in such high concentrations that treatment with conventional small molecule drugs or monoclonal antibodies is not feasible. However, because a single protease can cleave hundreds or thousands of targets, proteases have the potential to be an ideal therapeutic strategy to treat complement-mediated disease. The Company has demonstrated the ability of its lead anti-complement Alterase™ Therapeutics to eliminate several complement targets at far lower doses and with significantly greater effect than relevant benchmark antibodies in several animal models.
Catalyst has selected complement component C3 as its initial target, which is at the nexus of the complement system. Human genetic studies, as well as rodent knock-out models, have strongly implicated C3 in inflammatory diseases of the eye, (including AMD) and delayed graft function in organ transplants, among several inflammatory diseases. Catalyst’s program is focused on developing an anti-C3 Alterase™ Therapeutic to treat delayed graft function (DGF) in renal transplants, an unmet medical need with a well-defined acute clinical endpoint. The anti-C3 program is currently in preclinical non-human primate efficacy studies, in which Catalyst has demonstrated both tolerability and pharmacodynamic efficacy while being able to fully deplete circulating C3 for an therapeutically relevant time period. Catalyst has selected an anti-C3 Alterase development candidate to take forward into further preclinical development.
