Solid First Technology Platform

CoDa's platform technology resolves key problems required to give value to wound healing solutions and customers. The technology works across a wide variety of wound settings and conditions, and typically with a single topically applied dose. Additionally, the intellectual property coverage is broad and encompasses all potential lifecycle applications of multiple products.

First Target and Lead Compound

The active ingredient in CoDa's lead drug product candidate, Nexagon^®, is a natural, unmodified oligonucleotide (30-mer) that downregulates the key gap junction protein connexin43. By modulating early biological responses in tissue repair, Nexagon^® dampens the inflammatory response and decreases wound spread to accelerate healing, leading to reduced inflammation, swelling and scarring. Data shows that connexin43 – the target of CoDa's drug product candidate – is normally dialed-down at the edges of acute wounds for optimal healing. Application of Nexagon^® pushes it down farther and faster, which leads to improved wound outcomes. Conversely, other data demonstrates that connexin43 is dysregulated (up) at the wound edge of chronic wounds, such as diabetic ulcers.  CoDa believes that one can better target available medical options and design more effective wound-healing alternatives by devising a therapeutic approach based on biological mechanisms naturally at work or conversely, at fault, in a given situation. The answer is thought to lie in connexin43, which can be seen as a "master switch" in wound healing that is temporarily turned "off" for superior healing of acute wounds, and when left "on" can lead to unwanted inflammation and/or stalled healing. The CoDa approach is not based on the use of pharmacological doses of a single growth factor or cytokine selected from the many such molecules that form part of the wound healing cascade (as has been tried repeatedly in the past, with little success). Rather, Nexagon^® appears to help the body's own wound-healing processes work better (in the case of acute wounds) or activate them (in the case of chronic wounds). CoDa's development strategy is to establish proof-of-concept clinical data in two tissue targets (ocular and dermal), addressing both healing and non-healing wounds.

Next Platform Products and Vision

In addition to Nexagon^®, CoDa has secured the rights to Peptagon™, a peptide-based medicine for blocking gap junctions that has proved useful in models of stroke, for example. CoDa has also secured rights to other wound-healing opportunities to broaden its technology platform in this area and secure long-term commercial life-cycle growth, including wound-healing technology from Bristol University based on modulation of another protein, called osteopontin. Leveraging CoDa's core technologies in gap junction modulation and wound healing could transform multiple billion dollar markets, create substantial benefits for patients and their health care providers, and provide substantial returns for CoDa investors and partners.