Discovery of A New Class of Integrin Antibodies for Fibrosis

Lung fibrosis, or the scarring of the lung, is a devastating disease with huge unmet medical need. There are limited treatment options and its prognosis is worse than most types of cancer. We previously discovered that MK-0429 is an equipotent pan-inhibitor of all v integrins that reduces proteinuria and kidney fibrosis in a preclinical model. In the present study, we further demonstrated that MK-0429 significantly inhibits fibrosis progression in a bleomycin-induced lung injury model. In search of newer integrin inhibitors for fibrosis, we characterized monoclonal antibodies discovered using Adimabs yeast display platform. We identified several potent neutralizing integrin antibodies with unique human and mouse cross-reactivity. Among these, Ab-31 blocked the binding of multiple v integrins to their ligands with IC50s comparable to those of MK-0429. Furthermore, both MK-0429 and Ab-31 suppressed integrin-mediated cell adhesion and latent TGF{beta} activation. In IPF patient lung fibroblasts, TGF{beta} treatment induced profound SMA expression in phenotypic imaging assays and Ab-31 demonstrated superior in vitro activity at inhibiting SMA expression, suggesting that the integrin antibody is able to modulate TGF{beta} action though mechanisms beyond the inhibition of latent TGF{beta} activation. Together, our results highlight the potential to develop newer integrin therapeutics for the treatment of fibrotic lung diseases. One Sentence Summarytargeting integrin in lung fibrosis