Innate Biologics Enters Collaboration With The Wistar Institute

Innate Biologics has entered into a collaborative research agreement with The Wistar Institute, an international leader in biomedical research. Innate Biologics is a pioneer in targeting, treating and preventing inflammation and is working with Wistar to develop a first-of-its-kind recombinant protein platform, which specifically targets intracellular inflammatory signaling pathways.

Innate Biologics is in the pre-clinical stage of developing novel cosmeceutical and therapeutic approaches for treating and preventing diseases and conditions whose root cause is profound inflammation. These approaches include transdermal applications to treat diverse inflammatory skin conditions that result from trauma, wound healing, reactive dermatitis, and age-related inflammation leading to collagen breakdown and thinning of the skin, including rhytides, commonly known as wrinkles. The therapeutic platform is being developed to treat inflammation associated with auto-immune conditions such as asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, obesity, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, and other conditions and syndromes characterized by activation of inflammatory pathways. Innate Biologics is also developing a therapeutic platform to treat cancer, by attacking the inflammatory response in the local tumor microenvironment.

“We see a large opportunity in both cosmeceutical and therapeutic markets to target the specific molecular pathways that cause inflammation, moving beyond today’s non-targeted approaches. We intend to introduce biologically active proteins to down-regulate the inflammatory response at a molecular level. Innate Biologics is well along advancing the development of our proprietary approaches and intends to commercialize in cosmeceutical, pharmaceutical and direct-to-consumer marketing channels,” said Peter Mondics, chief executive officer, Innate Biologics.

For cosmeceutical and therapeutic skin applications, Innate Biologics is developing treatments that target skin inflammation by repositioning naturally-occurring, re-engineered bacterial effector proteins prepared in easy-to-apply topical formulations. These proteins are highly specific, potent inhibitors of the NF-kappaB pathways, one of the controlling mechanisms for skin inflammation, which, over time, results in collagen breakdown, photo-aging of the skin, and other associated aging symptoms.

“We were struck by the incredible specificity, potency and selectivity of the platform of bacterial effector proteins and we augmented this naturally occurring platform for NF-kappaB inhibition using proprietary protein engineering approaches developed by Innate Biologics, LLC in collaboration with The Wistar Institute,” said Frank Rauscher, professor in the Gene Expression & Regulation Program and Caspar Wistar Professor at The Wistar Institute and co-founder of Innate Biologics.