Cytopia to use Start grant in pulmonary disorder work

Melbourne biomedical company Cytopia has won a $1.7 million AusIndustry Start grant to develop treatments for chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), a currently untreatable condition that affects more than 600 million people worldwide.

Cytopia, which is 79 per cent owned by Medica Holdings (ASX: MCA), is investigating the JAK kinases family of enzymes, which modulate the inflammatory responses that underlie a wide range of inflammatory disorders, including COPD.

Cytopia's Medica parent is matching the Start grant with capital raised from its successful $4.7 million share placement last week.

Cytopia's chief scientific officer, Dr Andrew Wilks, discovered JAK kinases while working in Melbourne's Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. More than 100 JAKs have been identified, and Cytopia owns worldwide exclusive rights to exploit many of them for drug research.

Medica's managing director, and CEO of Cytopia, Dr Kevin Healey, said the company was using novel computer-aided drug-design techniques to develop inhibitors of the specific JAK-mediated responses involved COPD.

Healey said the company's ChemoPhore suite of software saved much of the time and expense involved in identifying promising compounds, by allowing researchers to design molecules in silico and perform first-pass screening against therapeutic targets

The software scores molecules by their affinity for their targets -- Healey said the hit rate was around 20 per cent -- before a library of the best candidates was selected for conventional 'wet' research in the laboratory.

Cytopia has already identified three JAKs involved in the inflammatory process that causes COPD.

Under-diagnosed

Healey said there were currently no effective treatments for COPD.

"COPD is different from asthma, and probably a more serious disorder, because it groups patients with a range of chronic lung disorders like bronchitis and emphysema," he said.

Smoking is a major cause of COPD, which mainly affects older individuals. Healey said COPD was one of the under-diagnosed and under-treated of serious medical conditions in Western nations.

The potential global market for an effective treatment is currently $2.8 billion, and growing -- COPD is predicted to be the fourth most prevalent killer disease in the world by 2020, largely because of the enormous numbers of heavy smokers in populous Asian nations. "Unfortunately COPD is a bit like asthma in that there are many drugs to treat the symptoms, such as shotgun treatments like non-specific anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDS) and bronchodilators," he said.

"But because none actually treat the underlying disorder, nothing is currently available to halt the disease's progression.

"JAK kinases are involved in triggering the inflammation of the lungs, so if we can find JAK inhibitors, we can switch them off. We already have some potent inhibitory molecules we want to evaluate in animal models of COPD, but we're still a fair way from human clinical trials."