Seelos Therapeutics Announces Acquisition of an Exclusive License to Intellectual Property from The UC Regents

Seelos Therapeutics (NASDAQ:SEEL) has announced it has acquired an exclusive license to intellectual property owned by the Regents of the University of California regarding a technology created by the researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

As quoted in the press release:

Such technology relates to a family of rationally-designed peptide inhibitors that target the aggregation of alpha-synuclein (α-synuclein). Seelos plans to study this initial approach in Parkinson’s disease (PD) and will further evaluate the potential clinical approach in other disorders affecting the central nervous system (CNS).

This new program will be known as SLS-007. Pre-clinical data provide supportive evidence to slow progression – an early sign of disease-modifying potential in PD.

SLS-007 is a peptide-based approach, targeting the NACore (nonamyloid component core). Recent in-vitro and cell culture research have shown the ability to stop the propagation and seeding of α-synuclein aggregates against increased monomeric alpha-synuclein expression, fibril preparations of seeded alpha-synuclein, and alpha-synuclein seeds derived from patients diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease or Lewy Body Dementia. Seelos will evaluate the potential for in-vivo delivery of SLS-007 in a PD transgenic mice model. The goal will be to establish in-vivo PK/PD and target engagement parameters of SLS-007, a family of anti-alpha-synuclein peptidic inhibitors.

Raj Mehra, PhD, Chairman, Founder, and CEO of Seelos, stated, “Accumulation and aggregation of α-synuclein is a pathological hallmark of PD. Though its role is not completely understood, it appears pivotal in the pathogenesis of PD and other α-synucleinopathies such as dementia with Lewy bodies and multiple system atrophy. Reducing the levels of pathological forms of α-synuclein may alter the course of PD.”

Click here to read the full press release.