The therapeutic start-up Synklino welcomes a prominent member, Dr. Atul Humar, to its Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) to strengthen the company’s ties to the clinic.
Synklino is developing a therapy for CMV infections in organ and stem cell transplant recipients and has been incubated at BioInnovation Institute in the Creation House program since August 2019.
Dr. Atul Humar is Director at the University of Toronto Transplant Institute, which is the largest multi-organ Transplantation Centre in North America. After two years of clinical collaboration with Synklino, he has accepted the role on the SAB.
“I am excited that the prospects of Synklino’s lead compound could allow us to make a leap-change in the way we manage CMV in transplant patients. I would like to see work in further pre-clinical studies and a pilot safety trial using the ex vivo approach starting in a year from now”, says Atul Humar.
Contact through Nature Communications
His group has been testing Synklino’s molecule in a pre-clinical setting in live human organs to remove the virus before it becomes a problem by treating organs in the incubation period prior to the transplant.
”We came in contact with Atul Humar after we published an article in Nature Communications a few years ago describing how our drug candidate works not only as an anti-viral but also targets infected cells where the CMV remains dormant”, says Thomas N. Kledal, CEO of Synklino and former head of Virology at the Veterinary Institute, Technical University of Denmark.
He is very pleased to welcome Atul Humar and describes him as essential in the discussions around constraints and benefits in the clinical positioning of Synklino’s lead candidate.
“Atul Humar runs numerous clinical trials in this field and he is writing guidelines for how to treat CMV in North America. He is highly innovative in his way of thinking and improving quality of life for organ transplant recipients”, says Thomas N. Kledal.
Dr. Atul Humar is joining a very experienced and scientifically strong SAB also including John Sinclair, Professor in molecular virology from Cambridge University who is an expert on the CMV’s life cycle, especially during latency.
“With the addition of Atul Humar to the SAB, together with the other senior members of the board, we are ready to take the important strategic discussions and decisions on the clinical development path for our unique drug candidate, aiming to save the life of transplant patients by eliminating cmv infections”, says Thomas N. Kledal.
Synklino is currently in pre-clinical development with its drug candidate, SYN002, and is planning to initiate toxicology studies and CMC development in the first half of 2021.
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