Trinity Spinout Company Trino Therapeutics Secures €9m to develop New Class of Drugs for Inflammatory Diseases

Posted on: 26 June 2013

The Trinity College spinout company, Trinity Therapeutics which is developing a new class of drugs to tackle inflammatory diseases has raised over €9 million to fund clinical trials.

The drug discovery and early drug development company focused on anti-inflammatory therapeutics, recently announced  the funding from new investors, Fountain Healthcare Partners and founding investor, the Wellcome Trust. Other investors in Trino include Enterprise Ireland and Growcorp.

The company is developing PH46A, the lead candidate from a novel, proprietary, class of drugs which was inspired by the indane scaffold molecule derived from a Taiwanese fern. PH46A is a potential first-in-class oral small molecule drug for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which could be used in both ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD).

Other molecules in Trino’s drug class show promise with broad anti-inflammatory activity that could be suitable for applications in dermatology, pulmonary and auto-immune disease and the company will work to develop these compounds internally and in partnership with major international research centres.

The additional funding from the Wellcome Trust is in the form of a prestigious, international and highly competitive Strategic Translation Award.

 Head of Business Development at the Wellcome Trust, Dr Richard Seabrook commented, “Current treatments for inflammatory bowel diseases often have significant side effects and patients are faced with tough decisions in how to manage their condition. We are pleased to extend our successful partnership with Trino to support the development of PH46A as a potential new therapy for these debilitating disorders.”

The company  founded by Trinity pharmacologist Professor Neil Frankish and medicinal chemist Professor Helen Sheridan centres on their highly innovative work on pharmaceutical grade drugs based on the indane skeleton as derived from a Taiwanese fern, used historically in plant-based medicine.

Commenting on this investment on behalf of the company Professor Frankish said, “This significant investment validates our research, enabling us to expand the Trino team and develop our clinical partnerships so that we can investigate the effectiveness of our research where it is needed – in patients with inflammatory diseases and ineffective drugs”.