Laurent Pharmaceuticals is a biopharmaceutical company focusing on rare diseases. The company’s lead candidate (LAU-7b) is a once-a-day oral small molecule drug with anti-inflammatory and anti-fibrotic effects, currently being evaluated in a Phase 2 clinical trial in adult patients with Cystic Fibrosis. The study is now past half-enrolled involving sites from US, Canada and soon Australia. This Phase 2 is supported by a $8M development award from US CF Foundation.
The CF market is dominated by CFTR modulators, a class of drugs acting on the defective protein responsable for the dehydration of mucus, leading to infections. While CFTR modulators are now available to most patients, due to the recent approval of Trikafta® (Vertex, Oct 2019), chronic inflammation is still untreated and the main cause of irreversible lung damage.