E! 114520 ACTION: A pioneering strategy to treat autoimmune diseases

Our goal is to provide a revolutionary treatment for the 600M people worldwide who suffer from autoimmune diseases. Current treatments have moderate efficacy rates and can give serious side effects. We aim to substantially improve the medical condition of patients to a greater degree than current drugs and with less side effects, starting with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). RA is a common autoimmune disease that causes severe pain and joint deformities. Besides the huge benefits for patients, we could contribute to reducing the direct and indirect costs of RA. The total cost of RA in Europe is 45.3 billion Euros. Our approach is expected to be more cost effective than existing biologics and could save approximately 400 million Euros per annum on RA drugs in Europe, whilst improved patient health could reduce societal cost by 395 million Euros.

E!114520 ACTION has been approved as a Eurostars labelled project by the EUREKA association. The project consortium, is focussed on development of drugs for the treatment of autoimmune diseases. The novel drug will target the endocrine-immune interphase and the strong relationship between the level of hormones and symptom severity of autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis . The goal of the project is to develop drugs that have a more upstream role than current drugs in the deleterious cascade of events leading to inflammation and joint damage. The project, with a total budget of 1.6 million Euros and duration of 36 months, will be focused on evaluation of the effects of the developed drug candidates in autoimmunity in preclinical studies. By combining niched and specific competences of the consortium members we aim to deliver an IND approved drug ready for first-in-human trials post-project.