MYOS enters into R&D agreement with Cloud Pharmaceuticals

The research and development program will focus on product candidates related to the inhibition of targets in the myostatin regulatory pathway as well as inflammatory mediators associated with sarcopenia and cachexia. Under the terms of the agreement MYOS will have proprietary rights to the design and structure of any small molecules developed for the muscle-health treatment market.

MYOS has engaged Cloud Pharmaceuticals, a cutting-edge pharmaceutical design company that creates new drugs and drug candidates and accelerates the development process by implementing new, innovative cloud computing technology, to initiate synthesis and design for small molecules relevant to Furin regulation and Janus Kinase 3 (JAK3) inhibition.

Furin is a prototypical proprotein convertase that processes latent precursor proteins into their biologically active forms. Furin convertase plays a central role in the processing of myostatin to its biologically active form and therefore is a potentially important target for development of a therapeutic candidate.

JAK3 is a tyrosine kinase which functions in signal transduction and is thought to be a factor in complex biochemical pathways central to inflammation. Candidates created in this research relationship will be the Company’s first small molecules under consideration for further development as a treatment for age-related loss of muscle mass or sarcopenia in addition to cachexia.

Robert C. Ashton, Jr., M.D., Chief Medical Officer at MYOS commented, "This agreement underpins MYOS’ commitment to focus on the expansion of our biotherapeutics development pipeline in important therapeutic areas of unmet need. We are excited to move forward in earnest with our agreement with Cloud Pharmaceuticals and utilize their high-performance drug design platform based on novel cloud computing resources with the goal of optimizing and expediting our drug development program. Importantly, Cloud Pharmaceuticals’ unique technology has the ability to rapidly create and test novel molecules reducing both the time and cost of traditional drug development."

MYOS hopes to report on the initial target testing with Furin convertase by the end of 2015. Meanwhile MYOS will continue to assess and identify additional small molecule candidates for further design and evaluation within the Cloud Pharmaceuticals platform.