Abfero pharmaceuticals

Our Technology

SP-420

High tissue exposure to key organs

High tolerability

Excellent oral bioavailability

Crosses blood-brain barrier

Crosses blood-retinal barrier

The three currently available FDA-approved chelators carry significant safety concerns. Our lead compound, SP-420, belongs to a novel class of orally active iron chelators called desferrithiocins and has completed three Phase 1 clinical safety trials. SP-420 achieves high tissue exposure in key target organs and is a potentially safer alternative with greater efficacy, higher tolerability, and excellent oral bioavailability. SP-420 also crosses the blood-retinal and blood-brain barriers, requisite for retinal and neurological indications.

Sp-420’s
Potential

SP-420 has the potential to help the folks who need it most. Bringing discoveries forward to patients is what it’s all about.
Raymond Bergeron, Ph.D., Inventor of SP-420

Iron Balance vs Iron Overload

Healthy Iron Metabolism

Iron is essential to most living organisms. In humans, iron is found in proteins vital for cellular and organismal functions including oxygen transport, mitochondrial respiration, host defense, cell signaling, nucleic acid replication and repair. Our bodies have evolved a precise iron management system in which we absorb and excrete only 1-2 mg of iron a day to maintain a total body level of approximately 4 g of the metal. Healthy iron metabolism is highly efficient and tightly regulated, moving between proteins in bone marrow, red blood cells, macrophages and the liver.

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Iron-Mediated Damage

“Free” iron— iron not bound to any protein—is highly toxic and a driver of cellular damage. Transfusional iron overload (TIO)—resulting from chronic blood transfusions administered for a range of conditions such as thalassemia, sickle cell disease, and myelodysplasia—is an example of global iron-mediated damage. Iron overload can also occur locally. Emerging data implicates local brain and retinal iron accumulation in neurodegenerative and age-related diseases. Other examples of local iron overload are cardiac and renal ischemia/reperfusion (IR) injury.

AbFero’s Small Molecule technology

Because there is no physiological mechanism for the body to excrete excess iron, people with iron overload often require a chelator to maintain iron balance. Iron chelators are small molecules designed to recognize, bind, then remove iron from the body. AbFero’s technology is based upon the discoveries of a pioneer and leader in the field of iron chelator medicinal chemistry, Professor Raymond Bergeron, University of Florida. AbFero has an exclusive license to a large portfolio of chelators from the Bergeron laboratory.

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