Spin-out Companies

Established in 2001, as a spin-out resulting from University of Sheffield’s world renowned life sciences research, Asterion engineers hormone agonists and antagonists to provide therapies for disease states that include cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes.

Therapies involving cytokine agonists and antagonists are widely used in the world today and there are a vast range of disorders where the regulation of cytokines is important. Excessive production of members of the ‘Cytokine family’ is directly implicated in a variety of disorders including inflammatory conditions, autoimmune diseases and complications of diabetes and cancer. Reduced levels of cytokines are also implicated in a wide range of disorders including, short stature, obesity and immune suppression.

Currently available therapies based upon recombinant protein drugs can exhibit rapid clearance and degradation, a commercial and practical disadvantage meaning that patients usually require daily injections with associated high production costs.

Asterion's Intellectual Property portfolio enables the design and generation of recombinant protein drugs, based on their native structures. The advantages of the technology are delayed clearance molecules that are unlikely to raise an immune response. The technology is also applicable to second-generation, improved versions of certain recombinant protein pharmaceuticals that will be facing patent expiry.

The original idea for the Asterion approach was based upon clinical observations published by Professor Richard Ross, CSO of Asterion. Richard identified a truncated membrane bound GH receptor which, when over expressed, caused extreme short stature due to GH insensitivity (Laron's dwarfism). The lack of intracellular domain of the receptor blocked signal transduction and ligand mediated receptor internalisation, creating a natural dominant negative antagonist. Asterion's antagonist technology seeks to create proteins designed to mimic this type of dead-end complex observed in vivo.

The technology platform to generate growth hormone agonists and antagonists is being developed with a major pharmaceutical Company and Asterion is seeking other partners to develop candidates for other cytokine areas.

For more information visit

www.asterion.co.uk