For 75 years, the standard tools for autoimmune disease have consisted of steroids, cytotoxics and broad biologics that tamp down the entire immune system. They can help, but they are rarely curative. “They’re blunt instruments,” Regcell Inc. CEO Mike McCullar told BioWorld. “They can’t distinguish good immune cells and bad immune cells,” which is why many carry black-box warnings and must be taken for years, sometimes for life.

Boehringer Ingelheim GmbH has licensed an unnamed small-molecule preclinical candidate from Kyowa Kirin Co. Ltd. in the autoimmune disease space in a deal worth up to €640 million (US$739 million).

An examination of X-ray and MRI scans of 518 patients before and after treatment with Levicept Ltd.’s Levi-04 has shown that, in addition to providing significant analgesia, the selective neurotrophin-3 inhibitor may have a disease-modifying effect in osteoarthritis of the knee.

In idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, the lung tissue thickens and stiffens through proliferation of fibroblasts and invasion by inflammatory cells. One of the drivers of these processes is the enzyme autotaxin, which produces the signaling molecule lysophosphatidic acid. Several inhibitors of autotaxin have been reported, which show varying degrees of clinical potential.

Anti-inflammatory compounds can alleviate many acute and chronic diseases, including autoimmune, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disorders. However, many such compounds increase risk of numerous adverse events because they inhibit not only cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2), which induces pathological inflammation, but also COX-1, which is important for renal and gastrointestinal function.