Immunaffect B.V.
Business focus: In three parallel drug discovery programs Immunaffect B.V. aims to identify molecules and/or antibodies, which influence the activity of this receptor and are drug candidates for the treatment of allergies and auto-immune diseases.
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Immunaffect B.V. Employees in Amsterdam: |
Company Profile
Immunaffect B.V., founded in 2003, is a spin-off company from the department of Cell Biology and Immunology of the VU Medical Center Amsterdam. Prof. G. Kraal of Immunaffect discovered a receptor that plays a crucial role in tolerance induction.In three parallel drug discovery programs Immunaffect aims to identify molecules and/or antibodies, which influence the activity of this receptor and are drug candidates for the treatment of allergies and auto-immune diseases.
Science and Technologies or Services
The immune system attacks antigens that are harmful to the body. It is important that such attacks do not take place when the antigens that are presented are not harmful or even useful for the body such as food intake. For such friendly antigens the body develops tolerance. This tolerance induction is a normal process and is exerted at most mucosal surfaces, including respiratory and digestive tracts.If tolerance induction is not functioning properly, the immune system will produce unnecessary immunological responses to innocuous airway antigens or beneficial food antigens. The majority of immunological disorders such as autoimmune diseases and allergies are based on the perturbance of existing immunological tolerance against self-antigens and innocuous antigens in our food and environment. Immunaffect aims to repair the defect in tolerance for a specific antigen by targeting a specific receptor which is indispensable for tolerance induction.
Immunaffect aims to identify antibodies and molecules that have an agonistic effect on this receptor. When these potential drugs are administered simultaneously with the disease-causing agent, this will induce a permanent state of tolerance to that specific antigen as can be seen from the figure below.
This approach is fundamentally different from existing therapies:
a) It is disease-specific, meaning that the therapy will suppress the reactions against an allergen or auto-antigen but will not interfere with the immune system's capacity to fight viruses and bacteria, and
b) It will lead to an actual cure of the disease.
Alliances
- Vrije Universiteit Medical Center Amsterdam
- Specs (Delft)
- KeyDP (Leiden)
- Kiadis (Groningen)
- Pharma Bio-Research (Zuidlaren)
Keywords
- Tolerance induction
- Immune system
- Auto-immune diseases
- Drug discovery
