Development of the next generation of p53-targeting therapies that are effective even when p53 is mutated.
That’s our vision.
Cleara Biotech’s expertise lies in understanding the molecular and biological pathways underlying modifications in the tumor suppressor protein p53 (I), how impaired p53 signaling drives disease development, including cancer therapy resistance and metastasis (II), and how to exploit this knowledge for therapy development (III).
Cleara Biotech is a private biotech company based in the Netherlands and affiliated with the University Medical Center Utrecht. Its scientific founders are experts in understanding how p53 maintains cellular health and repair. They discovered that impaired p53 signaling is a point of intervention in tissue function in vivo (Cell, 2017) and that p53-impaired cells promote therapy resistance in metastatic cancer cells. When p53 signaling is impaired — a condition that is further exacerbated when p53 is mutated — cancer cells can become more aggressive. However, specific modifications of impaired p53 allow it to be targeted effectively, enabling the development of therapeutics that can safely and selectively clear therapy-resistant cancer cells. Since then, Cleara has developed a platform to design and optimize compounds that allow for the precise elimination of these treatment-resistant cancer cells in multiple cancer types.
A key component of our approach is our D-amino acid peptide development pipeline (see the Programs tab for more information). Cleara also identified a set of biomarkers that predict sensitivity, for which multiplexing technology is developed for companion diagnostics (proprietary technology). The combined development of compounds and biomarkers for efficacy emphasizes the powerful potential of Cleara’s peptides in targeting biomarker-positive, late-stage cancers.
Our lead program is especially centered around targeting “scarred” senescent and cancer cells, which are elevated in persistent damage and biomarkers as active p53 and PML (see Focus tab for more details). Cleara’s goal is to progress our scarring-specific FOXO4/p53 peptides into clinical development with a clear initial focus on p53-driven cancer metastases: