New York University rheumatology researcher Chuanju Liu has created a protein that has cured rheumatoid arthritis in laboratory mice.
Liu has launched a startup called Atreaon to manufacture Atsttrin, a modified form of the protein progranulin which binds with tumor necrosis factor (TNF) to stop and even reverse the symptoms of arthritis.
Arthritis occurs when the immune system attacks the body’s own joints. Current drugs for rheumatoid arthritis inhibit tumor necrosis factor (TNF), an inflammatory molecule that regulates the immune system. TNF has been implicated in diseases ranging from cancer to multiple sclerosis. Unfortunately, currently available anti-TNF medications also increase the risk of cancer, worsen autoimmune conditions, and can cost upwards of $20,000 a year.
The new synthetic protein engineered by Liu’s group targets TNF more specifically and can be produced far less expensively, according to the journal Science.
Liu and his NYU research group of 20 found that a protein called progranulin bound to TNF receptors in mice and reduced or eliminated their rheumatoid arthritis symptoms. They tracked down the precise fragments of progranulin responsible for binding to TNF and engineered a protein they called Attstrin that works far more efficiently. They were able to inject it into mice with mild arthritis and render them disease-free after several weeks.
“For early, mild arthritis, our molecule can completely prevent inflammation — it somehow reverses disease progression,” Liu says. In mice with more acute arthritis Atsttrin cut symptoms by half. The kicker is that Atsttrin can be grown in bacteria far more cheaply than the current method of using mammalian cells to grow TNF inhibitors.
“The results are really spectacular,” says Paul Anderson, a rheumatology expert at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Anderson was not involved in the study. “It looks like a new pathway for the treatment of inflammatory arthritis.”
Liu is confident enough that the results will translate to humans to co-found Atreaon to license the technology from NYU and commercialize Atsttrin. He is now the scientific advisor for Atreaon.
Chuanju Liu has been an associate professor at NYU since 2007. He received his PhD in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology from Shandong University. He then received postdoctoral training at Yale. Since 2002 Liu has held dual appointments in the orthopaedic surgery and cell biology departments at New York University Medical School.
Liu is editor-in-chief of Open Access Rheumatology Research and Reviews and sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including Frontiers in Bioscience and Clinical Medicine: Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Disorders. Liu received the Harold M. Frost Award from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research, the Dorothy W. Goldstein Award from the Arthritis Foundation, and the Kappa Delta Award from the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons and the Orthopaedic Research Society.
