Unfortunately, up until now, no single or combinatorial technologies have been available to specifically block the inappropriately activated parts of the immune system without shutting down the healthy parts of the immune system as well. Generally, the problem has been that therapies tend to be either damagingly broad or ineffectively narrow. Steroids and JAK inhibitors target larger systems in order to suppress the malfunctioning subsystems that we do not have the pharmaceuticals to specifically target. In general, this broader targeting causes unwanted side effects.

Steroids tend to work by globally suppressing immune function, and JAK kinases function by inhibiting the cellular signals that follow next in the pathways after cytokine activation. Since the JAK pathway is shared by many cytokine families, its blockade has broad effects on the immune system as a whole and therefore is associated with serious side effects.

Alternatively, monoclonal antibodies targeting individual cytokine pathways may lack efficacy since they don’t inhibit all of the other disease driving cytokines. Bioniz’s technology largely came about when NIH scientists became frustrated with the general ineffectiveness of the creation of targeted antibodies for cytokine blocking.

Bioniz Therapeutics is tackling cytokine redundancy with a new and patented platform technology that creates intelligently designed peptide therapeutics in which one molecule can be designed to adhere to, and inhibit, many selected combinations of gamma-chain cytokines. The gamma chain family of cytokines and their receptors play vital roles in immune system regulation, without which our bodies have been shown to collapse into Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID). The ability to inhibit only these cytokines in selected combinations allows for immune related diseases with known cytokine profiles to be modulated so that the healthy parts of the immune system are left intact, while those portions driven by these cytokine messengers can be turned off completely with only one molecule.

While the initial focus is on the gamma-c family of cytokines, the technology is applicable to other cytokine families including IL-6, IL-17, and TNF among others.

This approach provides an advantage to conventional anti-cytokine therapies where one anti-cytokine MAB is tested in clinical trials for its efficacy, ignoring the other disease driving cytokines. By having access to a rationally created library of peptides, each inhibiting a specific set of cytokines, we greatly elevate our chances of producing effective therapeutics and reduce the time it takes to come up with and screen candidates for biological activity, safety, and efficacy.

Beyond providing a few new drugs, Bioniz is changing the way we think about immune disorder treatment by bringing an entirely new platform technology to bear on the problem of cytokine redundancy.

Bioniz’s ability to selectively design single small molecules to address multiple cytokines means that Bioniz is unleashing a new generation of therapeutics that will give new hope to the treatments of autoimmunity and cancer while decreasing healthcare burden by providing cheaper, more effective therapies with fewer side effects. Bioniz is already approaching two Investigative New Drug (IND) applications in 2016 and is estimated to have saved a capitalized development cost of over $90 million on the typical development pathway thanks to the broadly patented and wholly owned rational design platform.

Bioniz’s ability to selectively design single small molecules to address multiple cytokines means that Bioniz is unleashing a new generation of therapeutics that will give new hope to the treatments of autoimmunity and immunogenic cancer while decreasing healthcare burden by providing cheaper, more effective therapies with fewer side effects. Bioniz is already approaching two Investigative New Drug (IND) applications in 2016 and is estimated to have saved a capitalized development cost of over $90 million on the typical development pathway thanks to the broadly patented and wholly owned rational design platform.