Company Profile:

Alivio Therapeutics

What if a medicine listened to cues from your body to provide therapy when and where it's needed?

Alivio is pioneering targeted disease immunomodulation as a new strategy to treat a range of acute and chronic inflammatory diseases. Targeted disease immunomodulation involves tuning the immune system exclusively at the site of disease in the body, with minimal impact on the rest of the immune system. Millions of people worldwide suffer when their own immune system turns against them, wreaking havoc in their bodies and causing serious disease. Existing treatment options act broadly throughout the body, rather than precisely targeting localized disease, which can result in unnecessary systemic exposure and side effects. Despite decades of work, few truly novel treatment approaches have emerged. Alivio is developing a novel, proprietary inflammation-targeting technology that could offer a potential solution. It is designed to entrap immunoregulatory drugs, adhere them to inflamed tissue, then deliver them based on the levels of inflammation. These unique properties have shown, across 8 different disease models, the ability to substantially improve a drug’s safety and efficacy, while at the same time making the drugs easier to administer. Alivio is developing a pipeline of new therapies to potentially apply to some of the dozens of conditions where inflammation is a central part of the underlying disease pathology, but targeted and effective treatment options are lacking.

More about Alivio

Drug-loaded hydrogel responds to arthritis flare-ups in real time

Hydrogel delivery enables long-lasting, ‘flare-responsive’ arthritis treatment

PureTech’s Alivio Technology Published in Nature Communications

PureTech Health Presents Data Supporting Treatment Approach for Interstitial Cystitis/Bladder Pain Syndrome Based on Novel Alivio Inflammation-Targeting Technology

The Gel That's Revolutionizing Pain Treatment

Q: What is the story behind the central idea that inspired the creation of your organization/company?

A: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), arthritis, psoriasis, and asthma are examples of the numerous auto-immune and inflammatory diseases impacting millions of people worldwide. Therapies have changed very little in the past several decades, despite the magnitude of the unmet need. This is because developing new drugs for tuning the immune system is very delicate; a balance needs to be achieved between reducing the inflammation that is causing disease without affecting the body’s ability to defend itself from infections and cancer. Several compounds exist that can be used to tune the immune system, but delivering them to the right place in the body and at the right levels is a remarkably complex challenge. Our scientific co-founders, Jeff Karp and Robert Langer, both serial biotech entrepreneurs who have collectively impacted countless lives with their innovations, have designed a novel material to address this problem. Starting with simple and safe components, they assembled a novel hydrogel that could entrap a variety of different types of immune-modulating drugs, target them to inflamed tissue, and then release them into the inflammation, depending on how much the immune system was over-reacting. Since the original idea was formed, the technology has been tested successfully in 8 different animal models of disease. We are now rapidly accelerating this technology to the clinic.

Q: What's the most inventive, innovative, or disruptive aspect of your initiative?

A: The traditional approach for new drug discovery in auto-immune and inflammatory diseases has been to identify new biologic targets, then design and develop drugs that modulate those targets. However, identifying new biologic targets has proven extremely difficult, since it is essential to find ones that are active selectively at the site of disease and have limited effects on the rest of the body. Recognizing the shortcomings of this old paradigm, Alivio is pioneering a novel strategy to treat these diseases based on the concept of “targeted disease immunomodulation.” This new view posits that the immune system can be selectively controlled in the diseased tissue but not the rest of the body. We believe that the most inventive aspect of our approach is our novel hydrogel technology, which may enable targeted immunoregulation to become a reality through two key properties: (1) targeted drug delivery to inflamed tissue and (2) drug release based on inflammation levels. Together, these two properties may help us develop a broad pipeline of new therapies that selectively modulate the immune system in the diseased tissue, while minimizing impact on the rest of the body.

Q: If you had a theme song, what would it be and why?

A: “Go the Distance” by Michael Bolton. The song describes the inner monologue of a person seeking to achieve something incredibly difficult, but – if successful – would benefit the lives of many people. The protagonist recognizes the magnitude of the challenges, admitting that they may temporarily lose their way, take a long time, be temporarily defeated, or potentially even lose hope for a time. However, despite these hurdles, they feel so inspired to have an impact that they will persist and “go the distance.” At Alivio, we recognize that we work to improve the lives of patients in need. This is why we come to work every day to face the challenges of new drug development.

Q: What single word or phrase best describes the culture of your startup and why?

A: “Urgent pursuit of important new medicines for patients in need.” Our scientific co-founders began the journey that culminated in the founding of Alivio with a singular goal – developing a solution to alleviate the burden of auto-immune and inflammatory disease worldwide. Even at the earliest stages of scientific discovery, a clinical translation mindset was top priority. The starting materials that led to the discovery of the Alivio hydrogel were selected to be simple, scalable, and as safe as possible. This was to reduce the risk to patients during clinical trials, accelerate development timelines, and more broadly, deliver a medicine to patients in need as soon as possible. We continue to carry this urgent translation mindset at Alivio. We are focused on constantly pushing ourselves to ensure our focus is exclusively on developing medicines which, if successful, will have a transformational impact on the lives of patients.

Leadership:

Aleks Radovic-Moreno

Co-Founder

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Participating Year: 2017 Aleks's Hive Talk View Website

Aleks Radovic-Moreno

Co-Founder

Aleks Radovic-Moreno, PhD, is on the leadership team of Alivio and is a Vice President at PureTech Health, the parent company of Alivio. He was previously a Research Scientist at the biotech startup, AuraSense Therapeutics (Exicure Inc), where he was a lead inventor of the company's core immunotherapy platform. Dr. Radovic-Moreno completed his graduate work as a NSF Fellow in Robert Langer's lab at MIT, where he developed novel strategies for managing bacterial infections, including a novel vaccine candidate for chlamydia, a disease for which no vaccine currently exists. Dr. Radovic-Moreno was awarded the Alumni Achievement Award by the Pennsylvania State University for extraordinary professional accomplishment by graduates under the age of 35. He received his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University and PhD in Chemical and Biomedical Engineering from MIT and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology.

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Participating Year: 2017 @aradovicm