10116620Transformative therapy development for the improvement of obesity managementClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKDia Beta Labs (DBL) is a Northern Ireland-based biotech company **devoted to tackling the worsening global metabolic disease crisis**, driven by uncurbed growth of obesity and diabetes. **DBL has uncovered a novel disease target in metabolic disease** which is selectively activated by our current lead molecule, DBL002\. Our data indicates **DBL002 has the potential to transform patient outcomes over current standards of care**. In particular, DBL002 favours fat loss over muscle loss, which is a major clinical advantage. This occurs through direct actions on brown fat and indirectly through reduction of appetite and greater disposal of blood glucose. These effects are a result of the presence of our novel, previously unexploited receptor of interest, on **multiple metabolic tissues**. The effects of DBL002 improve the **quality of weight loss obtained** compared to currently available agents which do not discriminate between muscle or fat loss. In addition to growing concern around muscle loss, currently available anti-obesity medications, GLP-1 analogues, are subject to often severe gastrointestinal side-effects, **culminating in discontinuation of these therapeutics in 70% of patients by 24-months**. Importantly, **no suitable alternative exists presently**. Thus, there is considerable need for new effective and well tolerated therapeutics for obesity management. This project firstly builds upon our exciting DBL002 data, to generate and validate a broader class of agonists against our novel target. This will significantly grow our therapeutic pipeline and **increase the chances of bringing a transformative therapeutic for metabolic disease management to patients**. Therapeutic leads generated through this project will be rapidly progressed through efficacy studies in cell lines and our state-of-the-art animal models of metabolic disease. Analysis in head-to-head studies with DBL002 and against current standard of care agents, will lead to the most promising of these compounds being taken to the next stage of development including assessing total body distribution and toxicology, **representing significant progress towards first-in-human trials**. Our approach will generate highly novel and differentiated peptides which will be **truly first-in-class agents for metabolic disease management**. DBL will leverage our **existing relationships with Pharma**, such as Eli Lilly & Co and Novo Nordisk, and with clinicians, informing experimental design and aiding in commercialisation strategies throughout this project.