Inflammatory Bowel Disease Program
Use of oral steroids is limited due to adverse side effects and most inflammatory bowel disease drugs are expensive biologics, which need to be intravenously administered in a hospital setting. A reasonable percentage of patients do not respond to these drugs. There is a clear requirement for a cost effective, easy-to-use therapy for inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome.
Professor Silvio Danese, who has recently joined Novapep’s Scientific Advisory Board, has published papers showing the beneficial effects of APC in IBD - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2920225/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17557119/. However, APC cannot be delivered orally and it is an expensive biologic, whereas G10 is an order of magnitude cheaper to manufacture and can be formulated for oral administration and kept at room temperature.
Novapep is developing an oral form of G10 for the treatment of IBD, which targets the lining of the lower intestine and colon, including epithelial cells and sensory nerve cells. Professor Danese’ group is undertaking G10 studies in 2022.
Annual global sales of IBD drugs are approximately $16 billion. Immunomodulatory biologic drugs, which comprise the vast majority of sales, are expensive and only effective in limited patient populations. The annual global sales of linaclotide, the only oral peptide for the treatment of irritable bowel syndrome pain is ~$1 billion. Novapep is targeting sales of more than $1 billion a year within the first three years of marketing approvals.