SBIR Phase I: Novel Peptide Immunomodulators for Treatment of Autoimmune and Inflammatory Disorders

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is in developing a novel class of compounds capable of treating autoimmune and inflammatory conditions safely and effectively. With the constant threat of new COVID variants, influenza, and RSV, there is an unmet medical need for therapeutics that can effectively treat autoimmune diseases especially in pediatric patients without compromising the immune system to respond to infections. This problem has been overcome with the discovery of novel compositions that demonstrate efficacy equal or superior to many of the first line therapies used to treat immune diseases. The improved safety, efficacy and lower cost of these therapeutics should provide a significant benefit to patients by overall contributing to their quality of life as compared to current medications, as well as marketing and partnering advantage in its commercialization efforts, which will focus on rare diseases, such as juvenile idiopathic arthritis-associated uveitis and pediatric Crohn’s disease among others. In the era of socio-economic disparities, these affordable drugs will become available to the historically neglected low-income communities. If executed successfully, this proposal would validate the platform technology and demonstrate the feasibility of identifying candidates for further development into life-changing treatments. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will demonstrate the unique design of novel compounds to augment and re-program the immune responses from pro- to anti-inflammatory, based on the binding to MHC class II molecules that leads to immunomodulation. The technical complexities of understanding the effects of peptide sequences on the outcomes of cellular interactions present challenges related to selecting the appropriate amino acids both for the random and specific components of these compositions. These hurdles will be addressed by design