Phospholipid

• VAV Lipids is headquartered in Mumbai, India and is among the world’s leading manufacturers of phospholipids and lecithins.
• The biopharmaceutical company manufactures plant phospholipids (LECIVA), egg phospholipids (LIPOVA), synthetic phospholipids and neutral lipids, APIs and specialty proteins.
• VAV Lipids will introduce its entire range of products through the company’s distribution network in Latin America.
• Arun Kedia, Managing Director of VAV Lipids, said, “Our expansion into Latin America will boost our global presence significantly.

• Calluna has raised EUR 75 million in a series A financing and is backed by Oxitope and Arxx’s existing lead investors, Forbion, Sarsia, p53, and Investinor.
• Calluna is developing novel therapies that harness the transformative potential of the body's immune system.
• As a result, Calluna has developed a robust pipeline of selective antibodies, targeting immunological diseases.
• The Company is raising further financing to develop its pipeline to multiple key clinical milestones over the next 2.5 years.

• Until the COVID-19 pandemic, however, vaccine development was still a long and idiosyncratic process.
• But the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines brought a new approach to vaccine development that has far-reaching implications for how researchers make drugs to treat many other diseases.

Some basics of mRNA drugs

• An mRNA drug comprises two essential components: mRNA molecules, which code for desired proteins, and the lipid molecules – such as phospholipids and cholesterol – that encapsulate them.
• From a drug development perspective, mRNA drugs offer significant advantages over traditional drugs because they are easily programmable.
• More importantly, different mRNA drugs produced by the same set of methods will have similar properties.
• This predictability significantly reduces the development risks and financial costs of developing mRNA drugs.

Self vs. nonself

• This may sound paradoxical – after all, your cells already contain large amounts of mRNAs.
• How does your immune system distinguish between self and nonself mRNAs?
• Therapeutic mRNAs enter cells using endosomes – sacs made of the cell’s membrane that take in materials from the cell’s environment.

• The 2023 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to the scientists who made this breakthrough discovery.
• RNA viruses also form double-stranded RNA when they replicate, and exposing cells to double-stranded RNA can lead to a strong immune response.
• Fortuitously, for mRNA vaccines, the residual amount of double-stranded RNA can stimulate the immune system to enhance antibody responses.

Moving beyond vaccines

• One promising example in development is using mRNA that encodes CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing proteins to knock out genes that cause specific diseases.
• This disease is an ideal target for mRNA-based CRISPR gene therapy because the target protein is produced by the liver.

• Notable new developments in these areas include using computational algorithms to optimize mRNA sequences in ways that enhance their stability and engineering RNA polymerases that introduce fewer side products that may cause an immune response.
• Further advancements have the potential to enable a new generation of safe, durable and effective mRNA therapeutics for applications beyond vaccines.

Li Li receives funding from NIH.

• Although several lipid types, including cholesterol, triglycerides, fatty acids, and phospholipids, are dysregulated in the kidney and contribute to CKD progression, dysregulation of cholesterol metabolism is one of the hallmarks of kidney injury in CKD.
• Cholesterol accumulation occurs in association with impaired transport of cholesterol out of the kidney.
• We are hopeful that protection against kidney injury, fibrosis, and disease progression seen with VAR 200 in animal models of diabetic kidney disease, FSGS, and Alport Syndrome will translate to humans.
• Our first clinical trial with VAR 200 in patients with diabetic kidney disease is planned to begin in early 2024.” To review a white paper summarizing the preclinical research with VAR 200, Click Here .