DeuteRx LLC announced the initial closing of a seed financing that will total approximately $2.8 million. The funding supports the advancement of DeuteRx’s lead program, DRX-065, into human clinical trials for the treatment of adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD).
“This funding will allow us to aggressively pursue our lead program for ALD, a monogenic orphan disease for which there is no approved therapy,” said Sheila DeWitt, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of DeuteRx.
“The preclinical results that DeuteRx has obtained with DRX-065, the stabilized R-enantiomer of pioglitazone, have changed the interpretation of more than 25 years of R&D efforts, which define the mechanism of action for pioglitazone and related thiazolidinediones (TZDs) as PPARγ agonists,” said Dr. Lex Van der Ploeg, advisor to DeuteRx. “DeuteRx’s unique ability to study stabilized, single enantiomers has revealed surprising differences in the pharmacological properties of each enantiomer of pioglitazone. DRX-065 has the potential to be a disease-modifying and reversing treatment for ALD patients, without the side effects caused by S-pioglitazone.”
Dr. DeWitt will be presenting preclinical results obtained with DRX-065 and their relevance for the treatment of non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) at the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases’ Liver Meeting on November 16, 2015, in San Francisco.
