LightOx are delighted to announce that we have joined forces with Radboud University Medical Center (Radboud UMC) and Dr. Marije Koenders and her group to begin project “APOLLO”.
Together this project will seek to establish an anti-fibrotic phototherapy for the treatment of patients with scleroderma. Scleroderma is an autoimmune disease that is characterised by an uncontrolled production of collagen that leads to pronounced skin and tissue thickening. This skin thickening often has a detrimental effect on patient’s quality of life, and can cause difficulties with movement, cardiovascular issues and digestive problems among many other symptoms.
Scleroderma affects around 180,000 people in Europe, and there is currently no effective treatment for those with the disease.
Dr. Koenders’ team have recently developed a revolutionary strategy to eliminate pathogenic skin fibroblasts implicated in the onset of scleroderma by attaching light-activated drugs to targeting antibodies, enabling highly specific destruction of these problematic cells.
Project APOLLO will bring together the teams at LightOx and Radboud UMC to couple our next-generation photosensitisers to these targeting antibodies, and apply them using in-vivo models to ascertain their utility in the fight against scleroderma with a view to progress these novel antibody conjugates towards the clinic.
