Equillium

          Equillium is a biotechnology company leveraging deep understanding of immunobiology to develop products for autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, or immuno-inflammation, with high unmet medical need.

          The company was founded in 2017 and has is headquartered in San Diego, California.

          Its initial product candidate, EQ001, is a first-in-class monoclonal antibody that selectively targets the novel immune checkpoint receptor CD6. CD6 plays a central role in effector T cell activity, which drives a number of immuno-inflammatory diseases such as graft versus host disease, asthma, uveitis, colitis, lupus and multiple sclerosis. Equillium believes EQ001 may have broad therapeutic utility and its current pipeline is focused on developing EQ001 as a best-in-class treatment for multiple severe immuno-inflammatory disorders.

          In July 2020 Equillium announced that it's planning to conduct a global randomized controlled clinical trial of first-in-class monoclonal antibody, itolizumab, in patients with COVID-19 under a US IND. This follows the encouraging topline results that its partner Biocon recently shared showing itolizumab significantly reduced mortality in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 in India, and they subsequently announced that the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has granted restricted emergency use of itolizumab for the treatment of cytokine release syndrome in COVID-19 patients with moderate to severe acute respiratory distress syndrome in India.

          Based on the encourage data from Biocon and subsequent DCGI approval, Equillium is planning to conduct a global randomized controlled clinical trial of itolizumab to treat moderate to severely ill patients with COVID-19 in the U.S. and abroad for which teh company will file a U.S. investigational new drug application (IND).

(Fonte: LinkedIn)