PR91281

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 25, 2021 /PRNewswire=KYODO JBN/ --

  -- Athos to perform a molecular analysis of patient samples from the

     Cleveland Clinic

Athos Therapeutics, Inc., a late preclinical stage biotechnology company

pioneering the development of first-in-class precision therapeutics for

patients with immune-mediated diseases, announced today a comprehensive Master

Research Agreement for a collaborative project on Inflammatory Bowel Disease

(IBD) with Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio. This collaboration will advance

the use of systems biology and computational science for precision medicine in

IBD, for conditions such as Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.

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IBD is a chronic complex disease resulting from the dysregulation of the immune

system triggered by genetic, epigenetic, microbial, and environmental factors.

Medications currently prescribed for IBD have limited efficacy, multiple and

potentially serious side effects, and do not take into consideration IBD

patient subtypes. It is now clear that a systems biology approach can be used

to properly characterize the heterogeneity of IBD at the molecular level. This

approach can stratify IBD patients into specific molecular subtypes and enable

the development of precision (custom-made) therapeutics.

"Currently available drugs for IBD intervene primarily on the inflammatory

response of the condition and, although patients may experience clinical

improvement, there is a progressive decline of therapeutic efficacy that

requires the need to switch to other medications with unpredictable outcomes,"

said Dimitrios Iliopoulos, PhD, MBA, Chief Executive Officer of Athos.

"Therefore, the field of IBD is in need of new approaches that can provide

precise, long-lasting and safe therapeutic options for the millions of patients

with IBD," he added. "Our collaboration is designed to identify actionable and

specific IBD pathology stratifications by leveraging a large volume of highly

annotated IBD biosamples to be used in our proprietary computational and

systems biology approach."

"This collaboration represents a significant shift and a major advance in the

therapeutics of IBD based on precision medicine that will accelerate the

development of personalized, safer and more effective drugs for IBD and other

autoimmune diseases," said Allan J. Pantuck, MD, MS, Chairman and Chief Medical

Officer of Athos. "We look forward to working closely with Cleveland Clinic to

work towards improving outcomes for patients with IBD."

"Cleveland Clinic is internationally recognized as a leader in the care of

patients with IBD," said Claudio Fiocchi, M.D, of Cleveland Clinic's Lerner

Research Institute. "This collaborative research will help to implement

precision medicine for patients with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis."

About Athos Therapeutics

Athos Therapeutics Inc. is a late-stage preclinical biotech company developing

small molecule therapeutics for immune-mediated diseases using artificial

intelligence-generated innovative chemistry and computational platforms. The

co-founders of Athos include one of the founders of Kite Pharma (acquired for

$12B), the medicinal chemist behind two multi-billion-dollar FDA-approved drugs

(Xtandi & Erleada), and the discoverer of the miR-124 drug target, currently in

a Phase III IBD trial. Athos identifies novel drug targets (hubs) by

integrating clinical and molecular datasets into the biological network of a

disease (the disease interactome) and matches them to its small molecule

computational chemistry platform. ATH-63, the Company's lead drug compound, is

moving into a Phase I human clinical trials for patients with IBD in Q12022 at

the Cleveland Clinic. Other Athos' pipeline programs include drugs for lupus

and various types of cancers.

SOURCE: Athos Therapeutics

CONTACT: Keith Hoffman, PhD, Chief Business Officer khoffman@athostx.com