Secarna Pharmaceuticals, a new breed biopharmaceutical company focusing on the discovery and development of antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) therapies to address challenging or previously undruggable targets in a number of organ systems, today announced that the company has entered into a co-development agreement with Firebrand Therapeutics, Inc., a research and development company focusing on cancer metastasis. The companies will leverage Secarna’s LNAplus platform to pursue novel targets playing a key role in cancer metastasis. Firebrand will contribute its longstanding expertise in this field.
Secarna’s proprietary third generation drug discovery platform LNAplus encompasses all aspects of drug discovery and pre-clinical development, resulting in highly specific, safe and efficacious antisense therapies for challenging or currently not druggable targets. Secarna’s LNAplus platform and LNAplus based ASOs have previously been validated by in-house projects as well as in academic and industry collaborations.
With over 15 development programs focusing on targets and indications such as immuno-oncology, immunology, antiviral, fibrotic diseases, ophthalmology, neurodegenerative diseases and cardiometabolic diseases where antisense-based approaches have clear benefits compared to other therapeutic modalities, Secarna is a leading antisense drug discovery and development company.
Firebrand Therapeutics’ leading drug discovery and development expertise is grounded in the work of Professor Yibin Kang at Princeton University whose research focuses on understanding molecular mechanisms of cancer metastasis by applying modern molecular biology, genomics, and computational biology approaches. Firebrand Therapeutics is dedicated to using different modality platforms to develop treatment for metastatic cancers.
Jonas Renz, managing director and co-founder of Secarna Pharmaceuticals, commented, “This agreement is a significant milestone for Secarna as this co-development project will further validate our approach to develop highly specific, safety-optimized and efficacious antisense oligonucleotide therapies for challenging and previously undruggable targets. Antisense oligonucleotides are gaining tremendous momentum following recent drug approvals. With our third generation LNAplus platform, I believe we are on our way to write new chapters in the book of antisense oligonucleotide discovery and development.”
Financial terms were not disclosed.
(Source: Secarna Pharmaceuticals)
Filed Under: Oncology
