DiaKine announces patent for diabetes drug at JPMorgan Healthcare Conference
SAN FRANCISCO DiaKine Therapeutics, a development-stage company with a concentration on the treatment of autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, announced at the 26th annual JPMorgan Healthcare Conference that it has been granted a patent for developmental drugs that could potentially cure diabetes and reverse its complications.
The patent covers novel tricyclic compounds that regulate cytokines, proteins that may mistakenly attack normal organs and tissue and cause diseases such as diabetes and related complications such as kidney and eye disease.
“These drugs were designed to prevent or treat diseases—such as Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis—that are affected by intracellular cytokine signaling,” said Jerry Nadler, DiaKine’s chief scientific officer. “Our research has shown that by selectively modulating certain cytokines with our current library of methylxanthine-based drugs, type 1 diabetes can be prevented or even reversed. This library provides for compounds with a new, non-xanthine skeleton.”
The patent states that the tricyclic compounds are useful for the treatment or prevention of symptoms or manifestations associated with diseases or disorders—such as chronic inflammatory disease, arthritis, psoriasis, asthma, Type-1 diabetes, multiple sclerosis and lupus disorders—that are affected by intracellular cytokine signaling.
“This patent is an important asset in our portfolio of intellectual property,” said Keith Ignotz, president and chief executive officer of DiaKine. “It provides for novel therapeutic compounds, pharmaceutical compositions and methods that can limit the inflammatory, or anti-inflammatory, response of a patient without using an immune suppressant or ‘sledge-hammer’ approach to treatment.”
DiaKine therapies may improve the function of insulin-producing cells and preserve any that remain in the pancreas after initial diagnoses, thereby halting the progression of newly diagnosed diabetes. Those patients with established diabetes may be relieved from the lifelong burden that results from this disease by providing them with new insulin producing cells through either transplantation or regeneration and modulating the immune system with these new medications. In addition, protecting new insulin-producing cells from a new immunological attack may, in fact, reverse the diabetes and prevent the resulting complications associated with this dreadful disease, the company stated.