Inhalon Biopharma is developing an inhaled immunotherapy platform for treating acute respiratory infections (ARI), such as syncytial virus (RSV), influenza, metapneumovirus (MPV), parainfluenza virus (PIV), adenovirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and middle east respiratory syndrome (MERS). Today there are no approved treatments for a wide range of ARIs that can lead to hospitalization, long-term health complications and sometimes death.
Our breakthrough discovery enables inhaled antibodies to trap pathogens (i.e. viruses, bacteria, fungi) in the lung mucus, which in turn block the infections from further spreading locally and facilitate the rapid elimination of the pathogens from the lung through normal mucus clearance. Although mucus in the lung airways is designed to protect the body from infections, pathogens have evolved to move easily through mucus to infect cells in the airways. Inhalon was launched based on the discovery of a new immune function – antibodies trapping pathogens in mucus – and molecular and biophysical insights into how to tune the antibody-mucin affinity. These “muco-trapping” antibodies bind to pathogens and crosslink them to mucins. Trapped pathogens are unable to infect cells and are rapidly eliminated by normal mucus clearance every 30 to 60 minutes – swept into the digestive tract and become sterilized by gastric acid. This muco-trapping function is mediated by glycans in the antibody’s Fc region and enhanced through the normal glycosylation process using Inhalon engineered production cell lines. This muco-trapping phenomenon has been confirmed with over a half dozen pathogens to date.
