Startups, BioPharma

Preventing airborne infection: Pulmotect arms the lungs with extra immunity

Pulmotect, a Houston-area biotech, has a drug that could rev up a patient's immune system in the lungs. It just received a $3 million grant from the NIH to learn whether its drug prevents pneumonia in cancer patients.

It’s like giving the lungs an extra layer of defense: By activating the immune system, Houston biotech Pulmotect is building a way to protect the lungs from a range of lethal (inhaled) pathogens.

The startup just brought in $3 million in the form of a three-year NIH grant. This is Pulmotect’s sixth NIH under the SBIR program. It’s also received a $7.1 million matching award from the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas in 2012. Notably, it’s getting equity funding from Fannin Innovation Studios — a nascent Houston-area life sciences investment firm.

Pulmotect’s lead candidate, PUL-042, stimulates receptors on lung epithelial cells that call the immune response into action. In preclinical work, this therapeutic has been found to protect against bacterial, fungal and viral pathogen, the startup says.

Pulmotect will be kicking off Phase 1b/2a trials later this year at University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. It’ll study the drug’s tolerability among leukemia and stem cell transplant patients – those who are susceptible to develop pneumonia.

“The lungs are the point of entry for many viruses and bacteria,” Magnus Höök, cofounder of Pulmotect and a professor at Texas A&M, said in a statement. “Our multi-institutional research team hypothesized that activating the innate immune defense of the lungs might provide effective protection against a wide range of deadly pathogens.”

Pulmotect’s approach is also meant to prevent and treat seasonal and pandemic influenza, and other respiratory infections that cause complications in patients with COPD, asthma and cystic fibrosis.

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