Vivtex & AI Proteins Enter Strategic R&D Collaboration to Develop Novel, Oral Biologic Therapies for Inflammatory Diseases

Vivtex Corporation and AI Proteins, Inc. recently announced they have entered a strategic R&D collaboration to develop novel, oral biologic therapies for inflammatory diseases.

The partners will leverage Vivtex’s proprietary and extensively validated GI-ORIS (Gut on a chip and AI) screening and formulation platform technology to evaluate and enhance the oral bioavailability of AI Proteins’ miniproteins designed to target and inhibit the activity of the TNF receptor 1 (TNFR1). Under the agreement, the companies will jointly conduct and share the costs of the program and will co-own any resulting data. No further financial details are disclosed.

Preventing inflammation by inhibiting TNF-alpha (tumor necrosis factor alpha) signaling is a highly validated approach and the mechanism of action of multiple approved biologic products that generate multi-billion-dollar revenues each year. There are multiple receptors for TNF-alpha and inhibition of TNFR1, which is responsible for mediating pro-inflammatory signaling activity, has the potential to be a safe and highly effective target for inhibiting this clinically important pathway. There are no FDA approved therapeutics that inhibit TNFR1, with several companies having tried and failed. AI Proteins’ de novo design process provides complete control over miniprotein properties and activity allowing them to achieve remarkable potency and novel receptor engagement to successfully drug TNFR1. With current TNF-alpha pathway inhibitors being injectables, there is a major opportunity to develop oral anti-inflammatory medicines with differentiated best-in-class safety and efficacy.

Maureen Deehan, CEO of Vivtex, said “A key element of our new and evolved strategy is to enter collaborations with innovative companies where we can bring together our respective and cutting-edge technologies to create and co-develop novel therapeutic candidates that have the potential to address significant delivery and bioavailability challenges – in this case, an oral TNFR1 inhibitor to treat inflammatory diseases. AI Proteins’ miniprotein technology combined with our own GI-ORIS™ technology presents an opportunity to develop and bring a completely new oral anti-inflammatory medicine to patients, making this highly effective modality available to a much larger patient population.”

Noah D. Beerman, CEO of AI Proteins, added “At AI Proteins, we are proud of the bold and dynamic science supporting our de novo miniprotein technology platform, which has the potential to make a profound impact on the development of novel medicines across multiple therapeutic spaces. To date, we have focused on designing our miniproteins to achieve ideal therapeutic characteristics and have now validated hits for over 100 targets. This collaboration aims to combine promising features of our powerful miniprotein platform and Vivtex’s transformational oral biologics platform to develop anti-inflammatory therapeutics.”

Vivtex was launched as a spin out from the labs of Robert Langer (MIT) and Giovanni Traverso (MIT, Harvard University). The company is focused on transforming the market for biologic therapies through the development of novel oral biologics including enhanced, oral versions of existing high-value biologic candidates that can only be administered by injection or infusion.

To achieve its mission, Vivtex is leveraging its proprietary and extensively validated high-throughput GI-ORIS (Gut on a chip and AI) screening and formulation platform (Nat. Biomed. Eng. 4, 544–559: 2020) through strategic co-development partnerships and R&D collaborations with biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. For more information, visit www.vivtex.com.

Boston-based AI Proteins is a biotech company on a mission to re-imagine protein therapeutics with a novel approach for designing entirely new proteins. Using AI-based design and a high-throughput drug discovery platform, AI Proteins creates de novo proteins optimized for specific therapeutic applications with a current focus on inflammation, metabolic diseases, and oncology. The AI Proteins platform enables the development of inexpensive, durable, highly specific proteins that have the potential for oral delivery. Additionally, the AI Proteins platform can dramatically accelerate the development of lead therapeutic candidates ready for IND-enabling studies. For more information, visit aiproteins.bio.