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news.US-based clinical oncology firm Sorrento Therapeutics has received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I grant to advance an immunotherapy targeting WNT1-Inducible Signaling Protein-1 (WISP1) to treat Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF).
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The grant was awarded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which is a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
Patients suffering from IPF gradually lose the ability to breathe due to increased scarring in the lungs. This condition could ultimately lead to death in two to five years after the disease is diagnosed.
Also called as CCN4, WISP1 is an autocrine and paracrine extracellular stimulus involved in several detrimental profibrotic processes.
The company’s senior director of R&D Dr Gunnar Kaufmann is the principal investigator on the SBIR grant, who will work closely with Dr Melanie Konigshoff at Comprehensive Pneumology Center (CPC) in Munich Germany, an expert on developmental signaling pathways in chronic lung disease, including IPF.
Sorrento president and chief executive officer Henry Ji said new anti-fibrotic drugs are desperately needed to treat IPF, which is a progressive, chronically debilitating clinical syndrome with unknown etiology and a terminal outcome.
"Therefore, we are grateful to NHBLI and NIH for their support of our anti-WISP1 antibody program.
"In addition, we are very excited to have received our third NIH grant this year supporting our innovative immunotherapies based on Sorrento’s G-MAB antibody library, which will allow Sorrento to advance several antibody programs targeting unmet medical needs outside of oncology," Ji said.