The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued key patent to Lpath Inc., a leader in lipidomics-based therapeutics, for protecting Lpathomab, a monoclonal antibody against lysophosphatidic acid (LPA).
The newly issued US Patent No. 8,158,124 claims antibody compositions directed against LPA, a bioactive lipid that has been validated as a target in multiple disease states.
“The issuance of our first Lpathomab patent is a major milestone for Lpath and an essential step in the product's development,” stated Roger Sabbadini, Lpath's founder, chief science officer and an inventor on the patent. “It provides further protection for our drug-development programme that promises to solve important unmet clinical needs.”
LPA is a well-validated drug target: peer-reviewed journals have established that LPA promotes tumorigenesis, metastasis and fibrotic disease and plays a significant role in neuropathic pain and in neurotrauma, including traumatic brain injury (TBI) and spinal cord injury (SCI).
Lpath and collaborators have recently shown that Lpathomab provides protection against neuronal cell death in TBI and SCI studies, where size of the injury was reduced after TBI; and behavioral function was improved after both TBI and SCI. Future studies will be directed toward examining Lpathomab's activity against a range of CNS disorders in which cell death is observed, including Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Scott Pancoast, president and CEO, Lpath commented: “The issuance of a composition-of-matter patent for an anti-LPA antibody significantly enhances the commercial value of our Lpathomab programme. The LPA signaling pathway has been well implicated as a contributor to disease progression, and while others are intervening downstream at the LPA-receptor level, we believe the direct approach of neutralizing LPA itself has certain advantages that will prove out over time.”
Lpathomab was generated using Lpath's proprietary ImmuneY2 technology. This drug-discovery engine provides Lpath with a platform from which to generate antibodies against bioactive lipids, opening up a new array of drug-discovery possibilities. About 1,000 bioactive members of the lipidome are believed to exist, but the number could be considerably larger as the study of lipidomics continues to expand. Nature Reviews stated that bioactive lipids promise to occupy center-stage in cell biology research in the twenty-first century.
Lpath utilized ImmuneY2 to discover an antibody against another bioactive lipid, sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P). This antibody, sonepcizumab, is formulated as iSONEP for ocular delivery and as ASONEP for systemic delivery. Both of these drug candidates will be further investigated in phase II trials later this year.
Lpath, a therapeutic antibody company, is the category leader in lipidomics-based therapeutics, an emerging field of medicine that targets bioactive signaling lipids for treating a wide range of human disease.