Business Description

Overview ProMIS has in-licensed a patented technology platform with the potential to deliver a portfolio of antibody therapies, therapeutic vaccines, and other therapies derived from antibodies for neurodegenerative diseases and other misfolded protein diseases, which may include Alzheimer’s disease, multiple system atrophy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, frontotemporal lobar degeneration, Parkinson’s disease, progressive supranuclear palsy, corticobasal degeneration (respectively, AD, MSA, ALS, FTLD, PD, PSP, CBD) and schizophrenia. A common biologic cause contributes to each of these conditions, in that certain proteins, which normally perform a needed function, when misfolded, can cause neuronal degeneration and death, contributing to morbidity and mortality. ProMIS’ technology platform is an example of the advances in drug discovery enabled by computational power, in silico discovery, and/or artificial intelligence. We believe this platform provides a potential advantage by selectively targeting the toxic misfolded proteins with therapeutics. ProMIS’ EpiSelect TM Platform Technology ProMIS’ scientific foundation is centered on the growing knowledge base relating to diseases characterized by the presence of abnormal, misfolded proteins. Genetic and experimental research in the neuroscience community has demonstrated that propagating, neurotoxic, misfolded proteins (also referred to as prion-like particles or toxic soluble oligomers) are fundamental drivers of multiple neurodegenerative diseases, including AD, MSA, and ALS. ProMIS’ EpiSelect TM platform technology allows for the identification of conformational epitopes that become exposed on toxic, misfolded forms of a given protein but are not present on the properly folded form of the same protein. Such disease-specific epitopes (DSEs) can then be used to generate therapeutic antibody candidates that selectively target toxic forms of the protein without interfering with essential functions of the healthy protein. ​ The ability to model protein misfolding in silico to predict target epitopes restricted to toxic, misfolded forms of a protein was a transformational advance for the development of therapeutic antibodies in terms of speed and quality of the antibodies generated. Earlier methods using less defined immunogens, such as synthetic protein aggregates, relied on chance and extensive screening to identify promising antibody clones, and could never quite achieve strict selectivity for the toxic, misfolded protein. The Company first licensed exclusive rights to ProMIS TM target epitope identification technology from the University of British Columbia (UBC) to predict novel DSEs on the molecular surface of misfolded proteins. ProMIS TM is an “in silico” rational selection approach that could be applied to any protein where the normal folding structure is at least partially known. The Company subsequently acquired a worldwide license from UBC to EpiSelect TM a computational algorithm that supersedes ProMIS TM , employing thermodynamics and statistical mechanics to model protein misfolding. This proprietary computational discovery platform provides a unique and robust engine to predict DSEs on the molecular surface of misfolded proteins. The amino acid sequence of the toxic, misfolded form and the healthy, properly folded form of a target protein are the same but they differ in their conformation. The ProMIS platform offers the ability to identify targets (conformational epitopes) unique to the toxic, misfolded form. Cyclic peptides containing the conformational epitopes are created and used to immunize mice or rabbits to generate selective monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) that are designed to attack the disease-causing form of the protein without interfering with the healthy form of the same protein. The mAbs raised in animals are humanized (the critical binding regions are inserted into a human antibody framework) for potential use in patients. We believe the ProMIS approach has the potential to produce more effective and safer antibodies compared to traditional methods of immunization with whole proteins/peptides or aggregates which result in pan-reactive antibodies that cross-react with all forms of a target protein.…