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. A reasonable percentage of patients do not respond to these drugs. There is a clear requirement for a cost effective, therapy for inflammatory bowel disease.
Professor Silvio Danese, who is on 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 biparetide is an order of magnitude cheaper to manufacture and can be formulated for enteric coated, oral administration.
Novapep is developing an oral form of biparetide for the treatment of IBD, which targets the lining of the lower intestine and colon. Professor Danese’ group undertook biparetide studies in 2023 with positive results.
Annual global sales of IBD drugs are approximately $22 billion. Immunomodulatory biologic drugs, which comprise the vast majority of sales, are expensive and are only effective in limited patient populations. Novapep is targeting sales of more than $1 billion a year within the first three years of marketing approvals.