Bone Medical announces initial findings from BN006 proof of concept RA study

Jan 29 2013

Bone Medical Ltd (ASX: BNE), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of new medicines for musculoskeletal diseases, today announced initial findings from a proof of concept study of BN006, a treatment that it is developing for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) based on its Mozaic™ peptide discovery technology.

These first results confirm that BN006 reduces inflammation in a collagen-antibody induced arthritis disease model, a widely used benchmark for evaluating and comparing novel treatments for RA. The reduction appeared to be dose-related.

Significantly, BN006 achieved notable reduction in inflammation with only a modest reduction of TNF. TNF is one of the body's inflammatory agents that play an important role in the RA disease process.  BN006 has also been shown to reduce IL-6, another cytokine involved in RA.

Dr Roger New , CSO and inventor of the Mozaic™ system, explained, "The current standard of care for the treatment of RA works by binding to TNF and blocking its activity systemically.  This approach reduces TNF's ability to play its role in the body's immune response, leading to the adverse events that most commonly limit the clinical role of these products."

"In our study, BN006 achieved its effect with only a small reduction in TNF," continued Dr New. "While adalimumab (Humira™) eliminated inflammation in our study, it almost completely blocked TNF.  This provides experimental evidence for BN006's selective mechanism of action, which acts directly on macrophages to reduce their inflammatory activity, and confirms its potential to become an important advance in the treatment for RA."

Dr New said the Company was continuing to evaluate the results of the study, and would add another BN006 treatment arm to further expand the study outcomes.  More complete results are expected over the next couple of months.

SOURCE Bone Medical Ltd