About us
AplaGen GmbH is a biopharmaceutical company that started its business in August .
Our mission is to develop novel peptide-based drugs with low side effects and to reduce the side effects of established biopharmaceuticals.
We focus on:
Development of peptide-based cytokine-mimetic biopharmaceutical products with improved effect/side effect ratios
Women´s health and family planning (especially female fertility and infertility)
With our side-effect tailored cytokine-mimetic peptides we approach the classical markets for established cytokines: anemia, cancer and inflammatory diseases, including infection-related immune deficiency syndromes.
In the field of women´s health our long term mission is to develop a non-hormonal contraceptive drug that does not have the side effects of the established hormonal contraceptives. Our first product in this field will be a diagnostic kit that will be able to analyse auto-immune-desease dependent based female infertility and pregnancy disorders.
Women's Health /
Reproductive Medicine
AplaGen's approach centers around autoantibodies which are involved in female infertility. A special focus of AplaGen are antibodies and autoantibodies, which inhibit cell-cell fusion. Fusion of cells with each other is required for reproductive processes and comprises fusion of egg and sperm as well as fusion of trophoblast cells with each other during the process of attachment to the uterine wall. The mechanisms, which are involved in reproductive cell-cell fusion are very selective for this area. The only other events of cell-cell fusion in the human body (muscle fibres and osteoclasts) are mediated by mechanisms different from reproductive fusion processes. This explains why autoantibodies can exist, which exert their clinically relevant effects selectively in the field of female fertility/infertility.
AplaGen has identified so-called anti-idiotypic peptides, which bind to the specific binding site of such fertility-relevant autoantibodies.
Cytokines
EPO-Mimetic Peptides (EMPs)
Erythropoetin (EPO) is produced in the kidney and stimulates the generation of red blood cells. Recombinant EPO is used as a biopharmaceutical drug in patients with anaemia:
- Cancer (disease- and/or treatment-related anaemia)
- Renal dysfunction (related to dialysis)
- Chronic kidney disease
Treatment with recombinant EPO can induce antibody formation. These antibodies can severely compromise the activity of endogenous EPO and can even have a fatal outcome for patients. To date, all marketed EPOs are generated in mammalian cell lines. The production process is difficult to standardize and leads to slightly different products. This seems to be the main reason for the undesirable generation of antibodies to EPO. The above points are in support of the development of EPO-mimetic peptides (EMPs) that have no homologies to endogenous EPO, so that generation of antibodies to EMPs cannot compromise endogenous EPO function.
AplaGen has developed peptides which mimic the action of EPO, though having no sequence homology with the full-size cytokine. AplaGen's EMPs have significant advantages compared to marketed EPOs. No sequence homology to endogenous EPO prevents that antibodies against EMPs will influence EPO action or cause aplastic anemia. EMPs are small peptides (~20meres) which can be produced at low cost. Additional modifications (e.g. stabilization) can lead to EMPs with equal or superior activity than EPO. The peptides AGE-49C and AGE-53C showed excellent data in in-vitro tests. Now the peptides entered the preclinical stage. First trials confirmed the expected good results.
Diagnostic of auto-antibody dependent female infertility and pregnancy disorders
Based on these peptides, AplaGen has developed a diagnostic kit which is able to detect the autoantibodies with high sensitivity and specificity for female infertility and pregnancy disorders (e.g. habitual abortion and pre-eclampsia). These autoantibodies belong to the group of anti-phospholipid antibodies which correlate with increased risk of infertility. Actually, AplaGen is looking for a partner for distribution of the diagnostic kits.
Immuno Contraception
As a vision, AplaGen will implement immunocontraceptive strategies based on reversible immunopharmacological preparations of anti-idiotypic peptides. Thus, this approach will be a reversible mid-term immunocontraceptive strategy.