RS BioTherapeutics and NIH Enter Research Collaboration to Evaluate Prevention and Treatment of IPF

Rare Daily Staff

RS BioTherapeutics said it has entered into a Research Collaboration Agreement with the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, an institute within the National Institutes of Health, to assess the anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic potential of RS BioTherapeutics’ lead compound in a preclinical pulmonary fibrosis model.

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a serious, chronic disease that affects the tissue surrounding the air sacs, or alveoli, in the lungs. This condition develops when lung tissue becomes thick and stiff for unknown reasons. Over time, these changes can cause permanent scarring in the lungs, called fibrosis, that makes it progressively more difficult to breathe.

IPF is a rare disease with limited treatment options that is often described as one of insidious decline in lung function resulting in progression to respiratory failure and death within approximately four to five years after the initial diagnosis. In addition to a poor prognosis, IPF has a significant deleterious impact on patients’ quality of life.

The collaborative research protocol with NIH includes evaluation of RSBT-001 in a fibrosis induced mouse model and will evaluate four key endpoints identified by the American Thoracic Society as important for preclinical therapeutic assessment of IPF agents: lung histology, biochemical measures, levels of profibrotic gene expression, and pulmonary function parameters.