conceptual period

Recipient: Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
Funding: GO-Bio initial conceptual phase 2nd round (01/10/2021 to 30/09/2022, EUR 100,000.00)

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a progressive chronic metabolic disease affecting more than 450 million people worldwide. The disease is currently considered incurable.

Experts estimate that the number of sufferers will not only increase drastically in the coming years, but that those affected will also become younger and younger. As a result, the T2DM project is pursuing the goal of developing a drug substance that can cure or prevent type 2 diabetes. This would enormously improve the quality of life of hundreds of millions of people.

In around 90 per cent of all people with this form of diabetes, deposits of a protein known as amylin or islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) are found in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas. These deposits or small soluble components are suspected of having a toxic effect on the cells, causing them to lose their function and die.

In the conceptual phase, preliminary experimental work is to be carried out, in order to be able to implement the idea for drug development and transfer the analysed active ingredients to the feasibility phase. The overarching goal is to develop an drug compound that prevents the IAPP from "clumping", dissolves existing clumps and therefore prevents further damage. The research project thus contributes to the strengthening of innovative life science research approaches in the sense of the announcement by specifying utilisation ideas in order to subsequently successfully transfer products and services to commercial utilisation.

feasibility stage

Recipient: Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH
Funding: GO-Bio initial feasibility phase 2 (01/10/2022 to 30/09/2024, EUR 499,428.00)

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a progressive, chronic metabolic disease affecting more than 450 million people worldwide. An important feature of T2DM is the loss of function of insulin-producing cells in the pancreas (beta cells) or their steadily decreasing number. The resulting insufficient insulin secretion then leads to an abnormally increased amount of glucose in the blood (hyperglycaemia).

One of the main characteristics of the clinical picture of T2DM is the pathological deposition of a certain protein, more precisely the peptide amylin, also known as IAPP, in the pancreatic islets. Under normal circumstances Amylin controls activities of the digestive tract, such as gastric emptying. In T2DM, however, many amylin molecules form amyloid fibrils, which can grow and multiply like prions. Such amyloids, which can disrupt the healthy function of tissues and organs, are formed when previously healthy proteins lose their normal structure due to misfolding, forming fibrous amyloid deposits inside or outside cells. These prions are amyloids that continue to grow and multiply at the expense of functional building blocks, such as amylin in this case. This is where the TDM2 therapy project comes in, by developing an anti-prion strategy in form of drug candidates and applying these to T2DM disease to reverse protein misfolding.

In the feasibility phase, the active ingredients are to be characterised through extensive experimental work and proof of efficacy in living organisms (proof of concept) is to be provided. In the final stages, the aim is to register the property rights and write at least one high-quality publication in order to drive forward the preclinical analysis of the most promising drug candidates in future.