There are approximately 80 autoimmune diseases that result from defects in the immune system that cause the body to attack its own tissues and organs. These diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis and lupus. While there has been significant progress in the treatment of these diseases by injected medicines which target specific elements of the immune system, there is a significant unmet medical need for safe, affordable, and orally efficacious therapies.

The objective of Resverlogix’s Autoimmune Program is to discover and develop a new oral therapy for the treatment of autoimmune diseases by targeting two clinically validated cytokine mediators, IL-6 and IL-17. Using a prototype orally active compound, RVX-297, we have demonstrated significant activity in a widely accepted animal model of multiple sclerosis, murine experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), which is comparable to a recently approved oral therapy. In this model, the compound suppresses the activity of two T cell subsets, TH1 and TH17 that are known to drive the disease.

RVX-297 also shows robust activity in other autoimmune models. Based on these findings, we have expanded our program to identify compounds for the treatment of patients with autoimmune diseases through our internal discovery platform. Our unique insight into the target of these molecules has allowed the development of structure-driven chemical strategies and a battery of in vitro and in vivo assays to determine the optimal profile.