Aestus Therapeutics announces license agreement with Astellas Pharma

Jun 28 2010

Aestus Therapeutics, Inc. announced today a license agreement with Astellas Pharma Inc. (Astellas; Tokyo, Japan) to provide Aestus with exclusive, world-wide rights to the Astellas product FK614. Aestus will develop the product as ATx08-001, a novel, first-in-class therapeutic for the treatment of neuropathic pain. The first clinical trial will start later this year.

“We are pleased to enter into this agreement with Astellas to license FK614. The extensive database of human safety studies on FK614 will enable a faster, more efficient process to bring a potential new therapy through the clinical investigations and to market to treat chronic pain”

"We are pleased to enter into this agreement with Astellas to license FK614. The extensive database of human safety studies on FK614 will enable a faster, more efficient process to bring a potential new therapy through the clinical investigations and to market to treat chronic pain," stated Tage Honore, Ph.D., DSc, CEO and co-founder of Aestus. "This therapy holds a vast potential to provide a new treatment option to the 39 million people who suffer from chronic pain globally."

Using their proprietary, systems biology engine for the analysis of genome-scale expression data, Aestus identified ATx08-001, a PPAR-gamma agonist with an unprecedented safety profile, as a potential therapeutic for the treatment of neuropathic pain.

Aestus has already demonstrated that ATx08-001 is more effective than standard treatments in reversing pain behavior in pre-clinical neuropathic pain models.

Aestus is preparing for clinical trials to test the efficacy of ATx08-001 in the treatment of post-herpetic neuralgia (PHN). PHN is commonly defined as persistent pain following an outbreak of herpes zoster, or shingles. According to the National Institutes of Health, more than one million new cases of shingles are reported each year in the United States, many of which will lead to PHN. There is no effective treatment to relieve the lingering pain of PHN which is poorly managed by current drugs. Neuropathic pain is also a common complication of cancer, diabetes, viral infections, and other diseases.