Our Science

A potent and selective anti-inflammatory, dapansutrile (also know as OLT1177), in addition to certain of the Company’s platform drug candidates, is a modulator of interleukin (IL)-1 in the innate immunity pathway, via what is considered by the pharmaceutical industry to be the next significant therapeutic target to treat the many inflammatory diseases where current approaches are not effective, have serious side effects and/or are excessively costly.
 
Dapansutrile’s novel mechanism of action inhibits the maturation of pro-IL-1β and pro-IL-18.  Currently available biologics that inhibit IL-1β activity or production are used therapeutically for several inflammatory diseases. 
 
In all clinical trials to date, the pharmacology of dapansutrile has translated into a remarkably clean safety profile and has shown early clinical benefit in its Phase 2 trials, allowing the targeting of a wide breadth of inflammatory and other diseases mediated by excessive caspase-1 activation and overproduction of IL-1β.