BALTIMORE, Sept. 1, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — i-Cordis, LLC, an early-stage pharmaceutical company, has been awarded a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $1,548,708 from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) to further develop a potential immune-modulatory treatment for Heart Failure with preserved Ejection Fraction (HFpEF).
HFpEF is one of the major drivers of healthcare costs in the western world and arguably the largest unmet need in cardiology. “Currently, there are very few options to treat the vast majority of patients with HFpEF”, says Jennifer Baltz, the PI of i-Cordis’ grant, “and we’re working to address this growing need”.
With previous SBIR Phase I funding from the NHLBI, i-Cordis has completed proof of concept studies in rodent models, identifying Pegydone, a PEGylated derivative of the FDA-approved immunomodulatory drug pirfenidone, as a potential treatment for HFpEF. Pegydone is a new molecular entity with better exposure, less toxicity, and superior therapeutic effects than pirfenidone.
Jennifer Riggs, i-Cordis’ head of Medicinal Chemistry states, “The novelty of Pegydone resides not only in its optimized structural design but also in its cardioprotective mechanism of action. In preclinical models, Pegydone has demonstrated better tolerability and increased cardioprotective effects when compared to pirfenidone. We are very excited about Pegydone as a resolution therapy for HFpEF.”
In this Phase II SBIR grant, i-Cordis is looking to accelerate the development of Pegydone by completing critical pre-clinical studies to de-risk its drug development efforts. This project will be completed in collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. Luigi Adamo, the Director of Cardiac Immunology at Johns Hopkins University.
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SOURCE i-Cordis
