Novel more efficacious and safer treatments for inflammatory diseases

Important results from the project

InDex Pharmaceuticals (InDex) is a pharmaceutical company seeking to improve the life of patients suffering from immunological diseases. Our lead drug candidate is cobitolimod in late-stage clinical development for the treatment of Ulcerative Colitis. Cobitolimod is part of our platform, so-called DNA-based ImmunoModulatory Sequences (DIMS). InDex has additional DIMS compounds in early preclinical phase with the potential to treat several types of immunological diseases. The aim of this project was to select DIMS for further drug development for other inflammatory diseases.

Expected long term effects

The project had four phases and successful performance and positive results from each phase led to the continuation of the subsequent phase. All four phases have successfully been completed with positive outcomes. The result of the project enabled InDex to select the two most effective DIMS for further development for the treatment of two different inflammatory diseases. The result of this project takes us to the next level of drug development, which is to find the right formulation and conduct a toxicity study so that the compounds can be further evaluated in clinical trials.

Approach and implementation

The project had four phases that each phase followed subsequently after the positive outcome of the previous phase. Non-toxic concentrations of ten DIMS were evaluated in Phase I of the project. Cells from different donors were stimulated with several DIMS concentrations in vitro. After finding the non-toxic concentrations the efficacy of six selected compounds was evaluated in Phase II and III using simple inflammatory models of two different diseases. In Phase IV, the efficacy of selected compounds was evaluated in more complex models mimicking the two indications.