Adynxx and twoXAR Form Collaboration to Discover and Develop Treatments for Endometriosis
November 15, 2018 at 07:30 am EST
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Adynxx, Inc. announced an agreement to develop an oral, non-hormonal drug therapy with the potential to address the underlying mechanisms of endometriosis and significantly improve upon the standard of care. Under the agreement, twoXAR will use its proprietary AI technology to identify a set of drug candidates with the potential to treat or prevent the recurrence of endometriosis and associated symptoms. Adynxx will select candidates from this set to test for efficacy using in vivo models of endometriosis based on predetermined criteria. Following identification of one or more candidates based on those evaluated in vivo, Adynxx intends to conduct preclinical characterization work, IND-enabling work and clinical development. Further details of the agreement were not disclosed. Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease that affects 176 million women worldwide and is characterized by abnormal growth of endometrial-like tissue outside the uterus. It is associated with a range of symptoms including chronic pelvic pain, dysmenorrhea, dyspareunia, subfertility and hyperalgesia. Current treatment options consist of hormonal therapies, analgesics and surgery, with medications generally being the first and most common option. It is estimated that endometriosis will affect one in 10 women of reproductive age, with approximately 4.4 million women having been laparoscopically diagnosed in the US alone, making endometriosis one of the most common gynecologic disorders in the US.
Adynxx, Inc. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company. The Company is focused on the development of a new class of therapeutics called transcription factor decoys and bringing to market disease-modifying products to address unmet needs in the treatment of pain and inflammation. The Company has leveraged its AYX platform of proprietary transcription factor decoys to identify and develop product candidates designed to modify the course of pain. Its product pipeline includes Brivoligide for postoperative pain and AYX2 for chronic pain. Brivoligide is a transcription factor decoy specifically designed to inhibit the function of transcription factor Early Growth Response 1 (EGR1), in the dorsal root ganglia (DRG), and spinal cord when administered at the time of surgery. Its second product candidate, AYX2, is a transcription factor decoy targeting the activity of specific members of the KLF family of transcription factors, including KLF6, KLF9 and KLF15.