Disruptive circular strategies in early drug discovery

In Kærtor there were three prominent programs which, based on their originality and innovation degree, could induce fundamental changes in the translational research engagement and in the therapeutics (including patient stratification).
These three programs can be applied to other fields/targets independently of those proposed in the original EOIs. Thus, there are several EOIs that can be merged and benefit from a Road Map incubation in collaboration with the teams of the three programs.

‘Humans’ as ‘human models’ of disease mechanisms

These programs include extreme phenotypes and rare diseases for highlighting and understanding targets/cell pathways of human disease mechanisms. Kærtor has in its pipeline five programs focused in rare diseases.

These programs can be applied to another field/target different to that proposed in the EOI, in order to incorporate a holistic view in early drug discovery. There are thirteen programs including, among other, technologies for biomarker development, drug repurposing or RNAi technologies.

De-risking Alzheimer disease: It is well known the high risk associated w i t h drug discovery in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), thus several programs focused on AD from different perspectives were grouped, even though all of them are far away from clinical translation. These programs are depicted in the figure above.

Oncology programs: These programs present hot promising targets with different mechanisms to explore. Kærtor has identified seven programs focused on novel mechanisms for cancer treatment including protein folding, cancer stem cells, synthetic lethality or telomeres.

Angiotensin receptors as targets: There are three programs focusing on angiotensin receptors but in different pathologies other than hypertension. Two of them are very advanced and could serve as a proof-of-principle (PoP) in human.

Senescence as drug target: Kærtor has included in its pipeline two programs sharing drug senescence as mechanism of action for different pathologies

Cardiovascular and metabolic diseases: There are two programs that have either first promising molecules or disruptive targets for treating the pathology