上毅生物科技股份有限公司

Research and Development

■ What We Do

HuniLife is committed to developing first-in-class therapeutics for unmet medical need, indicating the innovation-pursuing nature of HuniLife. The products in development at HuniLife are acquired from renowned research institutes or companies through licensing or co-development. HuniLife plans to enable these products to be tested in clinic as soon as the required preclinical development works are completed.

　

■ How We Do

There is one major platform technology for drug development at HuniLife, enolase-1 (ENO1)-targeting technology. Antibody-based therapeutics are currently in development including antibody and antibody drug conjugate (ADC). Owing to the unique multifunctional properties of ENO1, HuniLife’s proprietary ENO1-targeting technology is designed for multiple indications in the spaces of immunology, respirology, oncology, and ophthalmology. More potential spaces might be revealed in the future based on our continuous effort to elucidate the underappreciated significance of ENO1 in biology.

　

■ Novel Therapeutic Target

➣ ENO1, also known as alpha-enolase, is a 47 kDa cytosolic enzyme which catalyzes the conversion of 2-phospho-D-glycerate to phosphoenolpyruvate in the penultimate step of the glycolytic pathway. Notably, ENO1 is also expressed on the cell surface where it acts as a plasminogen receptor under certain circumstances. Taking cancer for example, up-regulated ENO1 on the cell surface helps to sequester circulating plasminogen, together with urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) and its receptor uPAR, to lead to the generation of plasmin. Peri-cellular plasmin is a potent serine protease specialized in the degradation of extracellular matrix. Owing to this ability, cells armed with surface ENO1 would be able to harness the ability of plasmin to migrate or invade.

➣ ENO1 has been identified as a major plasminogen receptor on the surfaces of several diverse cell types accounting for different biological activities, including infiltration of immune cells and metastasis of cancer cells. We currently discovered a novel mechanism that extracellular soluble ENO1 (or membrane bound) could activate intracellular glycolytic pathway via still-investigated pathways. Therefore, ENO1 blocking antibody might exert dual mechanism by inhibition of both plasmin activation and pathological glycolysis reprogramming. We believe ENO1 may thus be an attractive therapeutic target for cancer or immune diseases, since ENO1 surface localization only occurs during those pathological conditions.

HuniLife Biotechnology, Inc.

Reference

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