BellBrook Labs has been awarded a $300,000 SBIR grant by The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to develop novel inhibitors for cyclic GAMP Synthase (cGAS), a promising therapeutic target for autoimmune diseases, including lupus.
The enzyme cGAS acts as a trigger for activation of an innate immune response to cytoplasmic DNA that results from microbial infection or genotoxic events. Once alerted, cGAS triggers a robust type I interferon response by producing the second messenger, cGAMP, which acts as an agonist for the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) receptor.
Aberrant activation of the cGAS-STING pathway by self-DNA has emerged as an underlying cause of terrible and often fatal monogenic autoimmune disorders such as Aicardi-Goutieres Syndrome (AGS). Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is another debilitating disorder where the pathway has shown to be a cause in a significant population of those affected by the disease. Using a small molecule inhibitor ...
