Novel medical therapy against viral-induced lung damage. Development of OGG1 inhibitors against lung inflammation and pulmonary fibrosis induced by viral infection

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (ARDS) caused by coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), persist in some patients and become permanent lung damage with breathing difficulties and reduced lung capacity.

Currently there is no medical treatment that both addresses the acute inflammation and the development of fibrosis.Helledaylab is a multidisiplinary team mixed with basic scientist and drug developers from pharma industry. Our team has taken basic science findings from the lab up to clinical phase Ib treatments.

The Helledaylab has received 4 ERC Proof of Concept (PoC) grants, which is EU record, and also spun-out several companies.

Here, we propose a completely new strategy for treatment of severe inflammatory diseases, published in Science in 2018.

We are first to develop inhibitors of the enzyme OGG1 with significant anti-inflammatory and antifibrotic effects in disease models.

The purpose of this project is to show PoC of selected OGG1 drug candidates in disease models for lung inflammation and pulmonary fibrosis, caused for instance by abnormal immune reactions in Covid 19 patients.

We aim to establish ADME, safety tox and PKPD modelling for selected compounds to be able to nominate a candidate drug for further pre-clinical development.The long term goal is to attract investors or partners to the project and start a clinical phase I/IIa trials followed by outlicensing, partnership or sale.