AngioB was founded as a Meytav Incubator portfolio company on July 2006. The company develops proprietary novel pro-angiogenic drugs to treat cardiovascular diseases and peripheral ischemic disorders. The company started in-vivo experiments to evaluate the pro-angiogenic potential of its lead compound in clinical-relevant models.

 

Drug Development, Therapy for cardiovascular diseases & peripheral ischemic disorders

 

Ischemic heart disease is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the western world and affects more than 10 million persons in the United States and hundreds of millions worldwide. In as much as the fundamental problem that underlies advanced ischemic heart disease is the inability of coronary perfusion to mach the myocardial oxygen demand, a logical strategy will be to improve the coronary perfusion. In the past 2 decades significant achievement in the treatment of ischemic vascular diseases has developed which includes thrombolytic therapy and percutaneous coronary intervention using balloon and stenting. At the same time, various laboratories have shown the use of protein angiogenic growth factors in the generation of new blood vessels within the ischemic zone (Therapeutic angiogenesis), thus allowing salvage of the infarcted myocardium. More recently it has been shown that endothelial progenitor cells can effectively induce angiogenesis in concert with the growth factors that are released within the ischemic territory. None the less, recent clinical trials have failed to show myocardial protection using either angiogenic growth factors (e.g. VEGF, FGF) or endothelial progenitor cells, following acute myocardial infarction.

  

AngioB presents a novel strategy for therapeutic angiogenesis, which differs from the current approaches in the basic structure of the developed agent and in its angiogenic target protein. Our pro-angiogenic lead compound consists of a short peptide (seven amino acid long), derived from the receptor of sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P)-3 (S1P3). S1P-receptors are G-protein coupled receptors and serve as key elements in the angiogenic response, by triggering both proliferation and migration of endothelial cells, and stabilizing the new formed endothelial capillary due to enhancement of cell-cell contacts and recruitment of smooth muscle cells.

Results of extensive ex-vivo experiments and primary in-vivo tests suggest that our novel peptide in combination with endogenous protein angiogenic factors (like VEGF, FGF) stimulates the formation of mature and stable blood vessels in contrast to VEGF or FGF tested at the same conditions. Since the levels of protein angiogenic factors like VEGF increase at the ischemic regions, we believe that administration of our peptide as a monotherapy will yield the desirable angiogenic effect in situ, by synergizing with locally secreted endogenous factors. AngioB started in vivo experiments to evaluate the efficacy of its peptide in a peripheral ischemic model in mice on August 2006.

 

Dr. Nurit Harel - CEO

Prof. Muli Ben-Sasson - Founder

Dr. Hadas Reuveni - Founder & CSO

Dr. Mickey Scheinowitz - Preclinical

Dr. Einat Galamidi Cohen - CTO

Board of Directors 

Zvika Rubinstein (CEO of the Meytav Incubator) - Chairman 

Dr. Ettie Pirak (Meytav)
Dr. Hadas Reuveni

Dr. Avri Havron (Meytav) 

Dr. Itsik Goldwasser (President of NasVax)

 

National applications have been filed in the US and Europe, based on the international application WO 2004/022576, titled: “short peptides from the 2nd loop of 7-transmembrane receptor which selectively modulate signal transduction”. Filing date: September 9th, 2002. Inventors: Prof. Muli Ben-Sasson & Dr. Hadas Reuveni.

The patent claims for the pro-angiogenic peptides derived from S1P3, as well as for the whole platform allowing the company to derive specific modulators from the second intracellular loop of any GPCR for any indication