Our Platforms
Supported by three innovative drug discovery platforms we aim to design new solutions for poorly managed diseases, like cancer, autoimmune conditions or Central Nervous System (CNS) diseases.
Our technology platforms are set up to provide new, highly competitive, „best in class” or „first in class” new medicines to improve or extend the life of millions of people.
The starting point of our solution is animal toxins. Molecular targets of toxins play a critical role in essential life functions, and as such in the treatment of many diseases. Thus, toxin targets can provide an ideal starting point for drug discovery. Our ISEP platform can find exceptional drug candidates with unprecedented selectivity and affinity through NGS based enrichment tracking and machine learning based data analysis.
MORE THAN A MILLION VARIANTS
The “Designer miniprotein” technology platform, based on naturally occurring toxins and other peptide molecules, creates a peptide megalibrary with more than a million variants. From the identified peptide analogues, the most promising drug candidates can be selected on the basis of desired pharmacological properties.
OF MOLECULES
In our laboratories at VRG Therapeutics, all experimental methods for testing candidate peptide/protein molecules are available. Besides commercially available approaches, several methods have been developed in house to test the newly created peptides for their pharmacological and biological properties such as binding strength, inhibitory or stimulatory effect on target proteins involved in selected diseases.
- Drug A has X effect in a given dose (indication is not necessarily the original indication of Drug A)
- Drug B has Y effect in a given dose (Y>=X) (indication is not necessarily the original indication of Drug B)
- Usually, without synergictic effect, effect of Drug A + Drug B is between Y and X+Y
- Synergistic effect: effect of Drug A + Drug B is higher than X+Y
- Original receptor:
- expressed on neurons
- when activated, affects (inhibits of excitates) the activity of neuron it is expressed on
- Activated by its endogenous ligand (produced by another neuron)
- May have some level of constitutive activity (without ligand)
- Modified receptor (DREADD)
- Expressed on specific neurons (defined by location and/or neurochemical attributes)
- No constitutive activity
- Does not bind its endogenous ligand (therefore not activated by it)
- Activated by an exogenous drug (actuator)
- Medical benefits
- Offers a safer alternative for some neurosurgery techniques (deep brain stimulation, lesion)
- Effect can be fine-tuned (by actuator dose and timing), even temporarily or terminally eliminated (if no actuator is given)
- Exact targeting better safety/efficacy profile then existing CNS therapies
- Employs the patients’ own T-cells
- T-cell receptors are modified so they can bind to other cell surface markers (Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-cells)
- CAR-T cells attack cells that express these cell surface markers (usually liquid tumors)
