Autoimmune disease is a general term for a class of diseases, including more than 100 common and rare diseases, which can affect many organs of the human body, such as brain, heart, nerve, bone, intestine, skin, etc. At present, the medical needs of autoimmune diseases at home and abroad are far from being met. In terms of the Chinese market alone, in 2020, the number of patients with rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and ulcerative colitis in China will reach 5.96 million, 1.04 million and 0.43 million respectively.
Clinical manifestations of main affected organs
Rheumatoid arthritis A variety of symptoms of joints and other tissues, such as lungs, nerves, skin and heart tissues, including fever, fatigue, joint pain, joint stiffness, joint deformation, shortness of breath, sensory loss, weakness, rash, chest pain and tendon swelling
Systemic lupus erythematosus joint, kidney, skin, lung, heart, brain and blood cell arthritis, but does not develop into joint deformity; Anemia symptoms may occur; Skin rash may occur; Hair loss is common
IBD nonspecific enteritis Crohn's disease of gastrointestinal tract, ulcerative colitis
Psoriatic skin, scalp, joint and other scaly erythema or plate; Joint swelling and pain; Patients with moderate to severe metabolic syndrome; Increased risk of cardiovascular disease
With the continuous deepening of research, more and more inflammatory factors and their signal pathways have been found, which involve a variety of different diseases, and may become the key to unlock the door to cure autoimmune diseases. Among them, JAKs (Janus kinases) have been found to be essential signal transduction mediators for many downstream inflammatory cytokines. JAKs are non receptor tyrosine kinases, including JAK1, JAK2, TYK2 and JAK3. Ligand induced receptor aggregation activates JAKs, and activated JAKs can phosphorylate receptors, thereby activating another STAT protein. JAKs and STATs are important components of many cytokine receptor systems, and are an intracellular signal transduction pathway closely related to inflammatory cytokines.
In many autoimmune diseases, interleukin-6 (IL-6) is closely related to JAK-STAT signal pathway, and its signal transduction is mediated by JAK/STAT pathway. Targeting IL-6 monoclonal antibody has achieved good results in the clinical treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, which confirms the importance of JAK dependent cytokines in the immune pathogenesis.
Faced with such a large patient population and unsatisfied medical needs, Medici, like its medical peers, is also moving forward to overcome various autoimmune diseases, committed to developing safer and more effective therapies, and bringing hope for the cure of millions of patients suffering from diseases. In 2021 alone, there were 11 autoimmune disease drugs and therapy projects that Medici helped to develop and successfully promote clinical trials, and their indications included IBD (intestinal autoimmune disease), rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, etc.
We have built a variety of mature animal models of autoimmune diseases, which can comprehensively reflect and evaluate the pathological and pharmacological and pharmacodynamic characteristics of various diseases, especially for the pharmacodynamic evaluation of popular JAKs inhibitors.