Kura has created Caspian Therapeutics to develop small-molecule menin inhibitors for diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. Formally launching today, Caspian has $50 million to get its drug candidates off the ground. Backers include the T1D Fund and Eli Lilly and Company, alongside a spate of firms that had previously invested in Kura. Kura owns about 50% of Caspian.<\/p>\n
Kura CEO Troy Wilson calls menin the \u201cSwiss army knife of targets.\u201d It\u2019s an epigenetic modifier that controls gene expression by modulating the methylation patterns on DNA. In certain forms of acute myeloid leukemia\u2014the disease that Kura\u2019s menin inhibitor Komzifti, or ziftomenib, was approved to treat last year<\/a>\u2014menin interacts inappropriately with KMT2A fusion proteins, driving the cancer. Komzifti stops menin and the fusion proteins from interacting.<\/p>\n In diabetes, Wilson says, menin represses proteins involved in controlling the cycle of \u03b2 cells within the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas cells. So a menin inhibitor could selectively expand the mass of \u03b2 cells in people with diabetes, increasing insulin production.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are trying to chisel away at diabetes, both type 1 and type 2, in lots of different ways,\u201d Wilson says. \u201cThey\u2019re doing cell therapy. They\u2019re doing implants. They\u2019re doing a whole bunch of approaches of autoimmunity, GLP-1s. There is no other therapeutic target that selectively regrows the pancreatic \u03b2 islet cells. It just doesn\u2019t exist. So this thing is kind of a unicorn.\u201d<\/p>\n The teams at Kura and Caspian expect to begin a Phase 1 clinical trial of Caspian\u2019s lead compound, the small-molecule menin inhibitor KO-7246, by the end of next year and have data from that study in 2028. Caspian will present more information about KO-7246\u2019s chemical properties at the annual meeting of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, which will begin in Milan later this month.<\/a><\/p>\n For Wilson, Caspian is the ninth company he\u2019s started. Its name, Caspian, refers to the Caspian Sea, into which the Kura River drains.<\/p>\n Caspian itself has only one full-time employee: Rob Spencer, who\u2019s acting as president and chief operating officer. Caspian and Kura will functionally partner on a lot of the drug-development process. The start-up will also work with Lilly\u2019s contract research organization Lilly ExploR&D. \u201cThere’s no point, right now, in building a lot of redundant capability,\u201d Wilson says.<\/p>\n
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