Numerous models for chronic disease (e.g., amyloid, inflammatory and metabolic models) have merit but each, taken alone, is incomplete.

Qnapsyn targets where the models all overlap: anomalous protein modifications!

Upstream Targeting of Chronic Disease:

Qnapsyn's Novel Opportunity for Success

Chronic and Degenerative Diseases: As Relentless as the Sea?

After decades of trying to find transformative treatments for chronic or degenerative pathologies like Alzheimer's, Diabetes, Lupus or Macular Degeneration, the great frustration is that so many drugs have shown real promise for treating disease symptoms or adjusting faulty pathways, but still fail to improve disease prognosis. The pathology seems as relentless as the ocean, slowly and inevitably stripping away coastal villages and farmland. Drugs are like the seawalls and breakwaters on the Norfolk shore that address symptoms in some areas (see @ in image), but fail in others (#).

The ocean may always win in the end, but that doesn’t mean we can’t improve! In fact, by better understanding the problem, we can greatly improve the outcomes!

Just like geophysicists have learned that seaside erosion is often best treated by restoring lost coastal vegetation or beach sand, the world of medicine has beginning to grasp some surprisingly basic factors that initiate or accelerate the onset of chronic and degenerative diseases.

The pharmaceutical world has spent decades building seawalls and breakwaters, but...

Qnapsyn takes 'beach sand and coastal vegetation' philosophy toward drug discovery.

The Challenge of Protein Quality Control: Who Does QC on the QC?

On the seashore, subtle things like sand and vegetation shield the land from erosive effects of waves, in effect acting as Quality Control (QC) to protect the coast. Similarly, proteins can be damaged by environmental toxins, inflammation, and the wear and tear of normal physiology, so the body needs its own QC systems (called proteolysis and phagocytosis) to repair, recycle or replace degraded proteins.

These safeguards are limited, and proteins that run QC in our bodies can degrade. Healthy people have a robust surplus of proteins available to deal with such damage but this versatility is finite. Protein QC declines with age, and can be drastically compromised in chronic and progressive diseases. Autoimmune, metabolic and neurological disorders hinge on damage to a narrow, crucial, set of affected proteins.

Qnapsyn has characterized this damage (pathological protein modifications) as the basis for novel drug design paradigm that can be phrased as:

What common factors cause chronic, degenerative loss of protein quality control?

Can these factors be corrected?

Targeting Philosophy

Many protein post-translational modifications, are beneficial, but electrophilic reactions with polar amino acids range from unhelpful to distinctly toxic. Our body has the resources to clear most such toxins, but...

Question: what if electrophiles damage the proteins tasked with clearing these toxins?

Answer: unfortunately, your toxin load grows until you develop chronic disease.

Small Molecule Therapeutics

One way to alleviate chronic autoimmune and neurological diseases arising from reactive electrophiles is to chemically detoxify these substances, turning them into chemicals that your body can more easily metabolize and clear.

Qnapsyn has developed two novel chemotypes that selectively target those toxins more commonly responsible for chronic protein modification.

Antibody Biologics

Slowing the rate that proteins get damaged is important, but you body still suffers from prior damage. Many modified proteins are not harmful, but there are several that cause persistent metabolic failure and autoimmune response. It is crucial to remove these threats.

Electrophilically modified proteins resist clearance, but specially designed antibodies can help your immune system to recognize them and target them for elimination.