New Targeted Therapies Help Decrease Lung Fibrosis

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) patients, who have a life expectancy of less than five years, could benefit from new targeted drug therapies.

Philip S. Low, the Purdue Ralph C. Corley, Professor of Chemistry and Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery, has led a team to develop two targeted therapies for IPF patients. The details are published in Science Translational Medicine and EMBO Molecular Medicine.

‘New targeted therapies allow to use powerful drugs that specifically deliver them to diseased cells without harming healthy ones.’

"This is a horrible disease that claimed the lives of my next-door neighbor and a good friend's wife," Low said. "We developed two targeted therapies that allow us to use powerful drugs with high toxicities because we specifically deliver them to diseased cells without harming healthy ones."

The first therapy is designed to slow fibrosis and improve survival rate. The second one is to suppresses fibrosis-inducing cytokine production.

These therapies will be moving into human clinical trials soon, as many patients with COVID-19 or who have recovered from COVID-19 experience lung fibrosis or related conditions.



Source: Medindia