Ollipass Selected for National Support Project for 'ALS Treatment Development Program'

[Asia Economy Reporter Chunhee Lee] OligoPlus, an RNA therapeutic platform company, announced on the 25th that its new drug development program for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) treatment has been selected for the "Pan-Government National New Drug Development Project for Expanding New Drug Bases," led by the Korea Drug Development Fund (KDDF). Accordingly, OligoPlus will derive new drug candidates for ALS treatment through the KDDF project over the next two years.

The National New Drug Development Project is a pan-government national research and development (R&D) initiative that supports the entire new drug development cycle based on an open innovation strategy involving pharmaceutical companies, academia, research institutes, and hospitals to strengthen the global competitiveness of the domestic pharmaceutical and bio industries and secure pharmaceutical sovereignty. Since last year, investments totaling 2.2 trillion KRW are planned over ten years.

ALS is widely known as the disease that American baseball player Lou Gehrig suffered from, and is also called "Lou Gehrig's disease." It is a rare, intractable disease characterized by muscle degeneration due to the degeneration of motor neurons. The incidence of ALS is estimated to be about 4.5 cases per 100,000 people.

ALS is a fatal disease with a survival period of about 3 to 5 years after onset. However, since the cause of onset is unclear, effective treatments have not been developed. Recently, it has been reported that more than 90% of ALS patients show decreased expression of the STMN2 protein, making STMN2 a promising target for ALS drug development.

To restore STMN2 protein expression to normal levels, RNA therapeutic technology acting on STMN2 Pre-mRNA is required.

Kim Sung-chun, CSO of OligoPlus, explained, "It is impossible to develop an ALS treatment using conventional RNA therapeutic technology that acts on STMN2 mRNA. Due to the technical characteristics of this STMN2 protein, OligoPlus's RNA therapeutic platform technology specialized for Pre-mRNA is a good fit."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.