Inflammatory bowl disease (IBD)

Though multiple small molecule and biologics medicines have been approved to treat IBD, none of them achieved substantial response rates in clinical trials. Specifically, the response rate of each approved drug is still no more than 30-40% at best, leaving huge and urgent unmet medical needs for new therapies. Even the highly anticipated Tulisokibart, the new kid in town blocking the TL1A-DR3 pathway, exhibited response rate in the same 30-40% range in recent clinical trials. It is evidenced that each of the clinically validated pathways play roles in some of the IBD patients in some of the disease progression stage; and that a more sustained treatment cover a broader percentage of patients require simultaneous actions on multiple pathways with multiple function mechanisms.

Aries will utilize its mini-protein platform to develop multi-specific and multi-functional molecules to treat IBD. In the first wave of projects, the function mechanisms will be simultaneous actions on the TL1A-DR3 pathway combined with another clinically validated pathway to achieve broader response in clinical trials. Moreover, the molecules will be made to oral formulation to fully take the size advantage of the mini-protein platform.

Celiac disease (CeD)

CeD affects 1% of the global population. A small percentage of the patients eventually progress to the refractory celiac disease (RCD), which does not have an aproved treatment option yet. About half of the RCD patient further progress to enteropathy-associated T-cell lymphoma (EATL) with a five year survival rate of ~50%.

Fortunately, recent phase 2 clinical trials working on few independent pathways reported promising efficacy data. Aries will screen and optimize mini-protein binders, conjugated with small molecule payloads, and formulated for oral administration, to make efficacious biologics therapeutics with little systemic exposure hence toxicity.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)

COPD is a prevalent respiratory disorder with severe outcome. In the USA alone, there are more than 16 million COPD patients, with annual fatality over 140,000.

COPD is a heterogeneous disease with different endotypes, i.e. the types of cellular malfunctions. The approved medicines of dupilumab (IL-4Ra) and mepolizumab (IL-5) covered the Th2 immune pathway dysfunction, leaving some other immune pathways untouched. Aries will develop multi-specific and multi-functional mini-protein therapeutics by adding a couple of alternative pathways that have shown promising evidences in early stage clinical trials and in preclinical studies to the current two clinical validated pathways. Such medicines will expediate delivery of meaningful treatment to COPD patients.