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Circassia Initiates Clinical Blood Sample Trial With Organ Anti-Rejection Technology
OXFORD, UK – 29 September 2007 – Circassia Ltd, a specialty biopharmaceutical company focused on controlling immune system responses, today announced the initiation of a clinical blood sample testing programme with it’s organ anti-rejection technology for use in kidney transplantation.
Circassia’s proprietary ToleroTrans technology has the potential to down regulate the immune system of patients awaiting organ transplants in order to reduce the risk of rejection. Organ rejection can occur when a transplant recipient’s immune system reacts strongly to protein molecules, termed antigens, that are present on the cells of the donated organ. Circassia’s ToleroTrans technology is based on specific small portions of these antigen molecules, called T-cell epitopes, which have the potential to selectively desensitize the recipient’s immune system and thereby decrease the chance of transplant rejection. Currently, transplant patients receive immuno-suppressant drugs, which are non-selective and therefore leave patients vulnerable to opportunistic infections and cancers.
Grafts of kidney, heart, lung, and other organs from one human to another always (unless donated by an identical twin) are seen by the recipient's immune system as antigenic and elicit an immune response. If unchecked, this response will eventually lead to destruction of the graft in a process mediated by the recipient’s T cells. The T cells respond to differences between donor and host tissue antigens. Circassia has identified a number of T-cell epitopes from the major tissue antigens (MHC I) that remain constant across the range of human tissue types and by tolerising individuals to these epitopes Circassia aim to significantly reduce T cell mediated acute and chronic rejection as well as down-regulating T cell help for antibody mediated rejection. Following a process of optimisation Circassia has now initiated a programme of trials with clinical blood samples to refine the selection of specific epitopes to be included in the product . During this testing, scientists will use clinical samples collected from patients who have received a transplant to assess the T cell mediated interferon gamma response to the T cell epitopes. This data will allow Circassia to evaluate the T-cell epitopes’ clinical potential before moving into larger clinical studies.
Commenting on the start of the trial programme, Steve Harris, Circassia’s CEO, said, “Organ rejection is a huge problem for patients undergo transplantation. As many as 10% of organs are rejected in the first year following transplantation and thereafter organ loss is about 3% a year. Our anti-rejection technology has the potential to improve the outcome for many of these patients, so I am pleased that we are rapidly progressing the development of our ToleroTrans therapy. While this trial is initially focusing on kidney transplantation, our technology is broadly applicable and we plan to initiate studies to control immune responses against other organs also.”
29 September 2007