Kidney stones are on the rise. One cause is a condition called hyperoxaluria – a potentially serious metabolic disorder that’s found in about 20-30 percent of patients with recurrent stones. It that lead to chronic kidney disease, end-stage renal disease and dialysis.
To date, there’s no approved therapy to treat hyperoxaluria.
An enzyme that can degrade oxalates – the compounds that often serve as the precursors to kidney stones – is being developed as an oral therapeutic by a Boston-area startup, and it’s attracted a fair chunk of change. Allena Pharmaceuticals just raised a $25 million Series B round, according to a regulatory filing.
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The company was founded in 2011, with a $15 million Series A cash infusion led by Third Rock Ventures, Frazier Healthcare and Bessemer Venture Partners. This current round has seven investors.
The key indication here is hyperoxaluria – a potentially serious metabolic disorder that often leads to kidney stones. It’s either caused by hyper-absorption of dietary oxalates – found in foods like spinach, strawberries and tea – or by a genetic predisposition to over-producing oxalates in the liver. These oxalates, when combined with calcium in the urine, snowball into kidney stones.
Earlier this year, Allen announced positive results from its Phase 1 trials, which showed a reduction in urine oxalate levels in healthy subjects treated with the ALLN-177 compound compared with placebo.
“With no effective pharmacological treatments for hyperoxaluria available today, people who suffer from recurrent kidney stones could benefit tremendously from a safe and effective therapy that may treat or prevent hyperoxaluria and kidney stones,” CEO Alexey Margolin said in an April release.
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Allena is now recruiting participants for a Phase 2 study at four sites – Omega Clinical Research in Rhode Island, the Cleveland Clinic, New York’s North Shore Long Island Jewish Health System and Indiana University.
A competitor in this space is Sweden-based startup OxThera, which raised 70 million kroner – or about $12 million – this April for its hyperoxaluria therapeutic. It’s got a seemingly different approach to hyperoxaluria therapy – developing its Oxabact therapy that uses the O. formigenes bacteria to degrade oxalates in the intestines.
OxThera has orphan designation for treating primary hyperoxaluria – the genetic form of the disease – and is now recruiting patients on both sides of the pond for Phase 2 trials. The U.S. site‘s the Mayo Clinic.