Licensing opportunity
Researchers from the Centre for Experimental Rheumatology at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, are seeking to license a microRNA precursor, miR-29, as a component of a new pharmacological treatment for skin and internal organ fibrosis suffered by scleroderma patients.
Scleroderma is a chronic autoimmune disease that causes severe fibrosis and results in death when key internal organs such as the lungs are affected. Steffen Gay and his team, at the University of Zurich, have shown that anti-fibrotic therapy based on miR-29 will improve the treatment of scleroderma.
MiR-29 is a microRNA precursor that is involved in the regulation of gene expression, that researchers have found to be expressed at low levels in skin biopsies of patients with scleroderma. Overexpression of miR-29 in scleroderma fibrotic cells, known as SSc skin fibroblasts, prevented fibrosis induced by collagen accumulation.
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