UniQuest and Janssen agreement focuses on immune system

The University of Queensland’s commercialisation arm, UniQuest and Janssen Cilag Pty Ltd have entered a research and development deal that is hoped will realise new treatments for ankylosing spondylitis psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease. The research involves enzymes involved in activating the immune system.

Professor Matt Brown, director of the University of Queensland Diamantina Institute, said, “This research and development agreement is a dream come true. These three conditions affect 2-3% of the world’s population, and there is a great need for better treatment.

“I have spent my career researching the causes of these conditions, so it is tremendously rewarding to be collaborating with Janssen to find a treatment based on one of our discoveries.”

Ankylosing spondylitis is an incurable immune disease affecting the spine, joints and tendons, and can be difficult to diagnose.

“Patients often ignore the initial symptoms, including recurring back pain and stiffness, but if untreated it can slowly worsen and result in the spine becoming fused and totally inflexible,” Professor Brown said.

Current treatments focus on reducing the symptoms, using non-steroidal anti-inflammatories and biologic therapies to minimise pain and inflammation.

In the 1970s it was discovered that most people with ankylosing spondylitis carried a mutation on a gene called HLA-B27.

Professor Brown said that for 40 years it was thought to be the only gene involved in the development of the disease.

“But since 2007 we have identified more than 26 other genes involved in the development of ankylosing spondylitis. This discovery has led to the resulting research collaboration.”

Professor Brown and colleagues published research in Nature Genetics in 2011, explaining how select enzymes work with HLA-B27 to help the immune system distinguish between what is self and what is foreign.

They showed that in ankylosing spondylitis genetic variants result in the production of overactive enzymes that act in combination with HLA-B27 to induce arthritis.

Research published in Nature Communication in May 2015 shows that a specific enzyme works in conjunction with HLA-B27 and other genes associated with ankylosing spondylitis, psoriasis and inflammatory bowel disease.

Professor Brown said the culmination of this research led to the identification of two enzymes as promising drug targets.

 “We think that by inhibiting these enzymes we could be able to switch off the immune reaction that causes these common diseases,” he said.

“In animal models the absence of such genes appears to have very few side effects.

“Our three-year collaboration seeks to capitalise on Janssen’s drug discovery expertise including their capability to screen thousands of compounds to find inhibitors of the two enzymes, which we would optimise together.”

Janssen Cilag Pty Limited, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, will have exclusive worldwide rights to develop and commercialise the drug candidates identified by UQ researchers.

Also involved in the project are collaborators from St Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research