Bioenergetics
Lycera has unique expertise in the emerging area of cellular bioenergetics, a field of biology focused on studying how energy is made and utilized in both normal and disease-causing cells. The aim of Lycera’s bioenergetics program is to develop orally available small molecules that exploit bioenergetic abnormalities in pathologically activated lymphocytes and result in the selective silencing of these cells.
Cartoon of the Mitochondrial
F1F0 - ATPase (click to expand)
Lycera’s bioenergetics program originated from the lab of the company’s founder and chief scientific officer Gary D. Glick, Ph.D., at the University of Michigan. This effort identified a proprietary family of pro-apoptotic compounds that possess steroid-like efficacy in animal models of lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, graft-versus-host disease and inflammatory bowel disease (colitis). These compounds differ from current therapies as they are not broadly toxic and are highly selective for pathogenic, disease-causing lymphocytes in preference to the normal immune cells that fight infection.
These agents modulate the mitochondrial F1F0-ATPase, which is an enzyme that is central to respiration and ATP production within cells. Differences in the way disease-causing immune cells make ATP compared to normal lymphocytes sensitizes them to modulation of the F1F0-ATPase. These discoveries represent fundamental new knowledge about immune diseases and new ways to treat them. Agents that modulate the F1F0-ATPase will therefore be unique, first-in-class drugs to treat a broad spectrum of conditions. Such drugs are expected to have significant advantages over existing products, including better efficacy, fewer side effects (particularly unwanted immunosuppression) and greater ease of administration.
