Santaris Pharma
| Industry | Pharmaceuticals |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Copenhagen, Denmark |
| Products | RNA-targeted medicines, Locked Nucleic Acid (LNA) based drugs |
| Website | www.santaris.com |
Santaris Pharma A/S is a biopharmaceutical company founded in 2003 in Copenhagen, Denmark with a small branch in San Diego, California that opened in 2009. Created by a merger between Cureon and Pantheco, Santaris Pharma A/S has become a leading clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that develops RNA-targeted medicines using a Locked Nucleic Acid (LNA) Drug Platform and Drug Development Engine.
The company was acquired by Roche in August 2014.
Santaris has the worldwide exclusive intellectual property rights to the therapeutic applications of locked nucleic acid (LNA) technology. This includes ownership of over 60 patent types, which range from the chemistry to manufacturing and from therapeutic uses to drug design. With their LNA technology, Santaris works on developing drugs for a wide range of diseases using microRNA and mRNA. Their research focuses on infectious disease and metabolic disorders. They also work on collaborations with pharmaceuticals to develop drugs for rare genetic disorders, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and immune and inflammatory diseases.
Santaris develops LNA-based drugs to efficiently develop, identify, and design drug candidates. Their drug platform is LNA (Lock Nucleic Acid), which is a modification of RNA containing an oxymethylene bridge between the 2’ oxygen and 4’ carbon in the ribose ring. This bridge forms a bi-cyclic structure that locks the ribose conformation, and is integral to the high stability and affinity of the LNA to its complementary RNA sequence. Santaris designs LNA oligonucleotides as antisense therapeutics to complement specific mRNA and microRNA sequences. Binding of the oligonucleotide to the target creates a stretch of dsRNA, and this prevents translation. LNA oligonucleotides are shorter than other antisense drugs, which allows them a higher target affinity and potency than regular RNA oligonucleotides. They are a novel therapeutic agents because of their resistance to endonuclease activity. LNA-drugs have many other favorable features: they do not need complicated drug delivery vehicles, manufacturing is scalable and cost-effective, the drugs are well tolerated, and there is potential for oral delivery. Their developed technology enables them to go through trial phases in 18 months, which is shorter than normal trials because it is not protein bound. They do this by using a screening library to find base sequences, using well known targets, and using mRNA sequences to help develop oligonucleotides.
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