Artizan Biosciences Selects Lead Product Candidate for Inflammatory Bowel Disease Therapeutic Development Program

Artizan Biosciences, Inc. recently announced the selection of its lead product candidate, ARZC-001, for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Discovered internally and wholly owned by Artizan, ARZC-001 is a novel, oral, gut-restricted potent small molecule inhibitor that is designed to neutralize a specific secreted factor of microbial-driven dysregulation and inflammation in the intestine.

In patients susceptible to IBD, certain organisms (or pathobionts) induce disruption of the gastrointestinal epithelial barrier causing chronic inflammatory disorders, including gastrointestinal diseases. Artizan’s highly differentiated IgA-SEQ technology and its flagship IBD-BIOME biobanking program allow the company to identify the patients where these culprits lurk and identify the factors they secrete. Artizan then develops small molecule and biologic therapeutics that inhibit these targets that act as agents in the inflammatory cascade.

“While progress has been made in IBD therapies, approximately 30% of patients are unresponsive to initial biologics therapy and, even among responsive patients, up to 10% stop responding to treatment annually,” said Bridget Martell, MA, MD, Artizan’s President and CEO. “Given the significant unmet medical need for sustained clinical remission in these patients on lifelong therapy, we are excited to advance ARZC-001 into the clinic to help patients with these devastating diseases and look forward to filing an Investigational New Drug application by the end of 2022.”

ARZC-001 is the first in a robust pipeline of product candidates in Artizan’s portfolio. Each candidate is distinctly different in its chemical composition and the target that it is aiming to inhibit. As it continues preclinical research, Artizan anticipates that ARZ-003 and ARZ-005 will enter the clinic shortly behind ARZC-001.

“This significant milestone represents the ability of the Artizan team to leverage the microbiome as a drug discovery tool in order to identify and characterize specific drivers of dysbiosis and immunologic dysregulation that drive chronic inflammatory processes,” said Noah W. Palm, PhD, Associate Professor of Immunobiology, a member of the Human and Translational Immunology Program both at Yale University, and a scientific co-founder of the company. “I look forward to seeing the progress of ARZC-001 in the clinic and demonstrating the potential of Artizan’s unique technology to develop therapeutics in IBD and other disease areas.”

Artizan’s proprietary drug discovery platform is applicable to a broad range of therapeutic areas, including central nervous system conditions, certain cancers, metabolic disorders, and autoimmune diseases. Recently, the Company also announced a Parkinson’s disease therapeutic discovery and development program collaboration with Biohaven Therapeutics Ltd.

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is comprised of a set of diseases that cause chronic inflammation of the small and/or large intestines with roughly 45% of cases defined as Crohn’s Disease (CD) and 55% as Ulcerative Colitis (UC).  As of 2017, the global prevalence of IBD is between 6-8 million cases, approximately 3 million of which are in the US. CD and UC can occur at any age, but diagnoses are most frequent between the ages of 15 and 35.

Artizan Biosciences, Inc. is a biotechnology company at the frontier of microbiome precision medicine, targeting, and blocking microbial-driven dysregulation and inflammation in the gut that is at the root cause of many serious diseases. The company’s proprietary drug discovery engine identifies and characterizes microbial drivers of disease within precise patient subsets in high-value areas including gastrointestinal, metabolic, autoimmune, and neurodegenerative diseases. Using a novel small molecule approach, Artizan modulates intestinal imbalance by inhibiting specific, disease-associated microbial virulence factors in the intestinal tract. The company’s platform with its lead program nearing the clinic in inflammatory bowel disease is validated by strategic partnerships with Biohaven Pharmaceuticals, Brii Biosciences, and Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. Founded with IgA-SEQ technology and preeminent immunobiology expertise from Yale University, Artizan is based in New Haven, CT. For more information, visit www.artizanbiosciences.com.