Ayushi Mehta
man with vitiligo
Ahammune Biosciences, a Pune based biotech startup company released an undisclosed amount of funds raised by Ideaspring Capital and Indian Angel Network. The funds were raised for the pre-series A.
The raise funds will be put to use for first hand, ‘first-in-humans trials’ for the Ahammune’s new drug candidate AB1001 for vitiligo. This study which is to be conducted shall include Phase-I safety studies in healthy human volunteers and Phase-II efficacy studies in vitiligo patients. Apart from this, these funds are also going to be used in building the patent portfolio of the drug for further research and development and studies.
In this socially-conscious endeavor, Ahammune has received support from the government in the form of tax-exemption for 3 years on capital gains.
Ahammune Biosciences filled the first Investigational New Drug (IND) Application with the Drug Controller General of India (DCGI) for permission to conduct human trails for its newly designed drug for vitiligo.
The current treatments and trails for Vitiligo provide only temporary and symptomatic relief. Thus, there is an enormous unmet global need in treating patients with Vitiligo.
While talking about the latest development of the drug, Dr. Parul Ganju, Co-founder and CEO of Ahammune Biosciences said- “Currently, there is no cure for vitiligo. Our drug aims to fulfill the unmet need in Vitiligo therapeutic. We have positioned it as a topical solution, a segment of the market that accounted for 54% of the total market share of available options. Our preclinical data suggest our drug candidate is very safe and is able to stop the spread of depigmentation and re-pigment white patches in animal models. Based on these studies, the first intended use of the drug will be in patients with non-segmental vitiligo, who have active vitiligo.”
Vitiligo is a skin de-pigmentation and de-coloration disorder. It has affected around 1% to 2% of the entire world’s population. However the disorder is a huge deal in India with around 8% of the population being affected by it.
Apart from developing the drug for vitiligo, this biotech company is focusing on targeting various other dermatological indications with its deep pipeline of IP-based molecules that modulate cellular pathways underlying skin health and immunity.
Ahammune Biosciences was founded by Dr. Krishnamurthy Natarajan and Dr. ParuI Ganju, Ahammune Biosciences boasts of a highly experienced and skilled founding team. The team brings together both scientific discovery and development expertise in the dermatology arena. This company was started with the vision of creating drugs and coming up with cost effective ways to treat different chronic skin diseases and has been doing that almost successfully.