Nautilus: oral protein drugs on the horizon?

Nautilus Biotech AS, a privately-held French biotechnology company developing next-generation therapeutic proteins, has presented strong data from in vivo studies of its lead products, Belerofon and Vitatropin,variants of human interferon alpha and human growth hormone, repectively, showing increased resistance to proteolytic degradation in both the blood and intestine, opening up the potential for orally-administered protein therapeutics.

Manuel Vega, the firm's chief executive, said: "protein therapeutics are currently administered by injection. However, the frequency of treatment can lead to toxicity and problems with side effects, and need for injection, in itself, means a very poor compliance for patients. Our technology offers the potential to create protein therapeutics that are resistant to proteolytic degradation in the gastrointestinal tract and might thus be administered orally, offering significant healthcare advantages."

Previous studies have demonstrated that the single amino acid point mutations in Nautilus' investigational proteins significantly improve their pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic profiles following subcutaneous administration in vivo and the firm says that these new findings now further demonstrate that the mutations block proteolysis in the digestive tract and render proteins orally-available without the need for a special formulation.