Adynxx and twoXAR have joined forces for the discovery and development of new non-hormonal oral therapies targeting the underlying causes of endometriosis.
“This collaboration is part of our plan to build a diverse pipeline of promising therapies to address unmet medical needs in pain and inflammatory diseases such as endometriosis,” Julien Mamet, PhD, founder and chief scientific officer of Adynxx, said in a press release.
Hormonal therapy, pain relievers, and surgery are the currently available treatment options for women with endometriosis — an inflammatory condition characterized by the growth of uterine tissue outside the womb.
These treatments only help manage the symptoms. Through this collaboration, the companies hope to identify non-hormonal therapies that can address endometriosis as a whole.
As part of the alliance, researchers at twoXAR will use proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) technology to identify several therapeutic candidates with the ability to treat endometriosis and the associated symptoms, as well as prevent its recurrence.
“Cutting-edge AI technologies like twoXAR’s can help generate a new understanding of biology and provide a sensitive prediction of the therapeutic benefit of potential drug candidates,” Mamet said.
Using its expertise in drug development, Adynxx will select candidates from the pool discovered by twoXAR for efficacy testing based on predetermined criteria in in vivo models of endometriosis. Promising leads from the in vivo tests will be further characterized using preclinical evaluations.
Adynxx plans to test the candidates in experiments that may generate information supporting an investigational new drug (IND) application. IND status is the first step in a therapy’s evaluation review process by government agencies. They also plan to conduct clinical development of the candidates.
“The combination of twoXAR’s unique capabilities in drug discovery with the Adynxx team’s clinical and drug development experience in pain, inflammation and women’s health enables an efficient discovery and development path for new therapies to reduce the burden of symptoms and directly target the disease biology,” said Andrew A. Radin, co-founder and CEO of twoXAR. “We believe the discovery strategy designed with twoXAR will allow us to identify and develop compounds with an accelerated timeline, decreased risk and reduced costs to address a serious health problem impacting millions of women in the U.S. and worldwide.”