Targeting the body’s complement system, part of the innate immune response, could be a solution for many diseases, including those of the skin and nervous system. But “inherent problems” with this pathway have made it historically difficult to drug. Enter Kira Pharmaceuticals, which launched with $46 million and technology out of the University of Pennsylvania to surmount those hurdles.
As its name suggests, the complement system helps—or complements—antibodies and white blood cells to fend off invading pathogens. But when it gets overactivated, it can turn against the body’s healthy tissues, causing inflammatory and autoimmune diseases.
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“Complement proteins are some of the most ubiquitous proteins in the body; for example, C3 is probably the second most common protein in the body after albumin,” said Kira CEO Frederick Beddingfield, M.D., Ph.D.
The complement pathway, or cascade, features several proteins like C3, including C5, the target of Alexion’s drugs Soliris and Ultomiris. It has “a lot of redundancies and a high turnover,” Beddingfield said, so even if a drug blocks one protein, another might pick up the slack.
“Even drugs against good targets have a history of not being effective because of those problems,” Beddingfield said. Kira’s goal is to create drugs that have a stronger effect than the approved drugs and that can be injected just under the skin rather than given by intravenous infusion, which can improve safety.
Kira’s lead candidate, P014, targets not one, but two proteins in the complement system, giving it a better chance to tamp down completely on disease-causing complement activation. The series A funding, drawn from Quan Capital, 6 Dimensions Capital, Qiming Venture Partners and SinoPharm Capital, will propel P014 and two more programs into clinical trials over the next 18 months.
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“The real gold standard today are the two approved drugs Soliris and Ultomiris,” Beddingfield said. But Kira isn’t just trying to improve on them—it wants to go into the scores of complement-mediated diseases that don’t yet have a drug. Soliris is approved for the treatment of four rare diseases, while Ultomiris is OK’d to treat two of those four. By Beddingfield’s count, there are between 100 and 150 others that Kira could target.
“We’re really looking at the tip of the iceberg. There is a vast, underlying array of real unmet need, neurological diseases, skin diseases, eye diseases—the list is huge,” he said. “It will take a very logical approach to developing drugs for specific indications.”
Besides shepherding three programs toward the clinic, Kira will build its team, both in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Suzhou, China. Apart from the science, it was this “cross-border opportunity” that hooked Beddingfield after his previous company, Sienna Biopharmaceuticals shut down at the end of 2019.