Rapid progress with drug discovery portfolio and ground-breaking findings in inflammation and neurodegeneration
4 July, 2016 - C4X Discovery Holdings plc (AIM: C4XD), an innovative drug discovery and development company, today announces the identification of multiple new drug targets in the areas of inflammation and neurodegeneration.
This represents the first major output from C4XD’s proprietary genetic analysis platform, Taxonomy3®, since it was acquired with Adorial Limited in March 2016, and demonstrates the speed with which it can be used to identify highly novel therapeutic targets across a range of unmet medical areas. Taxonomy3® is a unique mathematical tool that analyses publicly available databases to identify previously unknown linkages between genes and disease pathways, thereby highlighting targets with a strong causal role across a variety of disorders. C4XD acquired Taxonomy3® to provide it with a platform for discovering proprietary targets for screening with its existing conformational design technology (“Conformetrix”) to generate new drug molecules and today’s news allows the Company to expand its portfolio to areas of high unmet medical need such as Rheumatoid Arthritis and Parkinson’s disease. In more detail:
Rheumatoid Arthritis
Analysis of the publicly available Wellcome Trust’s Rheumatoid Arthritis dataset identified multiple novel targets that have not previously been genetically linked with this major disease. The targets are from protein families whose function suggests that any resulting drug molecules will have a very different biological impact on disease from that of existing rheumatoid arthritis therapies, enabling considerable therapeutic and commercial differentiation. C4XD has already prioritised two of these drug targets for evaluation as potential new pipeline programmes. Both targets are amenable to drug screening using C4XD’s Conformetrix technology and C4XD aims to have identified first hits for the first of these targets within 3 months.
Parkinson’s disease
Analysis of the Wellcome Trust’s publicly available Parkinson’s disease dataset identified multiple novel targets in discrete patient sub-groups that could potentially provide an opportunity in stratified medicine. C4XD is extending this analysis by examining an additional dataset that contains clinical phenotype descriptions to be used in combination with the genetic stratification. Once this analysis is complete, novel targets for progression will be selected and linked to a specific subgroup of Parkinson’s patients.
Commenting on the announcement, Chief Executive Officer, Clive Dix said: “The rapid progress we have made in the past few months demonstrates the potential of the enlarged C4XD platform to generate genetically validated targets in therapeutic areas of high unmet medical need that should have a significantly higher probability of clinical success. C4XD is already seeing the benefits of combining Taxonomy3® with Conformetrix as it allows us to expand the pipeline and accelerate progress towards our aim of becoming the world’s most productive drug discovery and development company.”
