Irish drug developer signs licensing deal for autoimmune therapies

Irish drug developer Inflection Biosciences has licensed a new approach to treating autoimmune and inflammatory diseases to Swiss preclinical biotech start-up, Mysthera Therapeutics.

The deal will see Inflection boss, Darren Cunningham, move to Mysthera as chief executive. Mysthera was formed by venture capital group Forty51 specifically to develop the therapeutic technology it is licensing from the Irish business. Forty51 Ventures, which is based in Basle, has provided $3.5 million (€3.2 million) in seed capital for the new company.

Inflection will receive an upfront payment as part of the deal as well as the potential for milestone payments as it is further developed towards what the company hopes will be drugs marketed for use in humans. Inflection will become a minority shareholder in Mysthera.

The Irish business has been developing a series of PIM kinase inhibitors – drugs designed to shutdown certain pathways used in autoimmune or inflammatory response in conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and nephritis.

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Mysthera’s website says that the approach in the programmes licensed from Inflection “has potential to transform patient lives in a number of disease settings including glomerulonephritis, rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease”.

Mysthera hopes that Inflections approach will allow patients to be treated without shutting down their immune systems altogether in a more efficient way than current therapies. It notes that autoimmune diseases impact over 23 million people in US alone. “Despite recent progress and novel treatment options, significant unmet needs remain due to poor response rates and adverse safety profiles of currently available treatment medicines,” it said.

The company said its focus would be in ongoing de-risking and benchmarking to identify the best clinical candidate to take forward.

“Leveraging our deep expertise in PIM kinase and immunology, we are pursuing a highly differentiated approach to tackle complex autoimmune diseases. We believe this will result in new treatments to change the lives of patients globally”, said Darren Cunningham, co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Mysthera Therapeutics

This is the second of Inflection’s three programmes to be licensed out. In 2019, AUM Biosciences is a Singapore-based biotechnology company that focuses on developing affordable cancer therapies, especially for areas with high unmet medical need in Asia, licensed the company’s PIM kinase inhibitor programme targeting cancer cells which is seen as having potential in tackling breast cancer, lung cancer, leukaemia and neuroblastoma.

Dr. Michael O’Neill, co-founder and Director, Inflection Biosciences commented, “We are pleased to license this innovative program to Mysthera Therapeutics. Mysthera brings considerable expertise in PIM kinase inhibition and immunology and along with their drug development capabilities will ensure that this program is successfully developed for the benefit of autoimmune disease patients globally.”