Center For Technology Commercialization

The anaphylatoxin C5a, part of the complement system, is involved in the pathogenesis of systemic inflammatory diseases such as sepsis, allergic asthma, adult respiratory distress syndrome and rheumatoid arthritis. C5a is an excellent therapeutic target in inflammatory diseases and blocking the C5a receptor with a C5a receptor antagonist is an ideal therapeutic. We have created muteins of the C5a anaphylatoxin which are C5a receptor antagonists and bind at the C5aR/C5L2 receptor with high affinity. The efficacy of these muteins has been demonstrated in inflammatory disease animal models such as arthritis, transplantation, transfusion-related lung injury, renal ischemia-repurfusion injury, immune complex disease skin blistering and sepsis.