Flying start for Tripep’s ChronSeal

Flying start for Tripep’s ChronSeal

Tripep has reached an agreement regarding shared development of Tripep’s ChronSeal with the Japanese company Kringle Pharma, Inc. Kringle Pharma is a world leading company in the development of the growth factor HGF (Hepatocyte Growth Factor). This growth factor is the pivotal component in Tripep’s ChronSeal project. The agreement gives Tripep access to Kringle’s recombinant HGF, manufactured according to Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP), i.e. having the product quality that is required for clinical studies in humans. This means that the developing time for ChronSeal has been reduced by 18 - 24 months. Tripep will immediately start the development of an optimal formulation, which then will be followed by toxicity studies. Thus the conditions look very promising for starting a phase II study with ChronSeal with recombinant HGF before the end of the year. 

“I am very pleased that we have come to an agreement with Kringle Pharma, who are world leading in developing HGF. When Tripep acquired ChronSeal at the end of 2006, the plan was to initially use HGF extracted from blood and to delay the large investments that are associated with developing a recombinant product. We have now strengthened our position in several aspects. Our new collaboration with Kringle Pharma enables us to start straight away to work with a recombinant product, thus reducing the development time dramatically. Under the agreement we also get access to relevant information from Kringle, e.g. a large number of toxicological studies. By this we reduce both risk and development time of ChronSeal thus increasing the value of the project. Together the two companies have a very strong patent portfolio, which again, enhances the value of the ChronSeal project.” says Jan Nilsson, CEO, Tripep AB. 

“Tripep and Kringle are both well fitted companies. We easily understood the similarity of each other, thus, we could build a win-win relationship based on mutual trust. Sweden is an ideal location to conduct a clinical trial of HGF for wound healing, because investigational human studies have been already conducted at Linköping University Hospital. I believe Tripep and Kringle will make a success developing the project using our recombinant HGF,” said Kunio Iwatani, President & CEO of Kringle Pharma, Inc.   

About ChronSeal
This autumn Tripep acquired a new patented applied therapy for the treatment of chronic skin wounds developed at Linköping University Hospital. The treatment is based on the intrinsic substance HGF needed for the healing of wounds, given in combination with antibiotics. This combined treatment is already successfully tested in humans and is based on the finding that patients with chronic wounds as leg wounds cannot produce functional HGF and that bacteria, always present in wounds, brake down functional HGF. The acquisition also entailed a patent applied diagnostic method for determining if a patient produces the active form of HGF or not. Approximately 1% of the population suffer from chronic leg wounds, i.e.approximately 8 million people in the USA and EU together.

About Kringle Pharma
Kringle Pharma is a Japanese biotech company based in Osaka. The company was established in 2001 to develop pharmaceuticals based on HGF and NK4, both discovered by Professor Toshikazu Nakamura at the Osaka University. Both HGF and NK4 have so called “kringle”-structures, hence the name of the company. Professor Nakamura discovered that HGF has an outstanding ability to regenerate/heal not only liver tissue but has a broad repertoire as regards the healing of various tissues. HGF also has a so called antifibrotic activity, which is not the case with other growth factors, the reason why HGF also has a potential to become a revolutionary therapy for fibrotic diseases for which there are no therapies today.  At present Kringle Pharma is developing HGF for the treatment of acute diseases.

NK4 is a molecule functioning as an HGF-antagonist as well as an angiogenesis inhibitor which in turn is induced by various growth factors including HGF. NK4 is a bi-functional, multi-target compound developed by Kringle Pharma for the therapy of various kinds of cancer.

President and CEO of Kringle Pharma is from March of 2003 Mr. Kunio Iwatani, earlier working with business development and marketing for the International Division of Takeda Chemical Ind. Ltd. (presently known as Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.) He was President and CEO of for Hokuriku Seiyaku Co., Ltd. and Director for Abbott Japan Co., Ltd. Associate Professor Kunio Matsumoto, who discovered NK4 together with Professor Nakamura is from 2002 the Chief Scientific Officer of Kringle Pharma. 

Professor Toshikazu Nakamura, advisor to and one of the founders of Kringle Pharma, is one of Japan’s most important scientists. He is the head of the Division of Molecular Regenerative Medicine, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Osaka University Graduate School of Medicine. His greatest discovery is the growth factor HGF. For this discovery Professor Nakamura has received a number of preeminent national and international prizes, such as Princess Takamatsu Cancer Award. The latest was given in November when he received the prestigious prize ”The Medal of Purple Ribbon” from the Japanese government for his life achievements in biochemical research, foremost his discovery of HGF and NK4 and his research concerning their characteristics and mode of mechanism.

For more details of Kringle’s technologies, please refer to the company’s web site at
 www.kringle-pharma.com/en/index.html

For more information, please contact:

Jan Nilsson, CEO, Tripep AB
Tel: +46 8 449 84 80, mobile phone: +46 70 466 31 63
E-mail: jan.nilsson@tripep.se

Anders Vahlne, Head of Research, Tripep AB
Tel: +46 8 5858 1313, mobile phone: +46 709 28 05 28
E-mail: anders.vahlne@ki.se

Kiichi Adachi, EVP, Director of Business Development, Kringle Pharma, Inc. 
Tel: +81 6 6831 3330
E-mail: adachi@kringle-pharma.com


Tripep AB is a Swedish biotechnology research company that develops and commercialises candidate drugs based on patented and proprietary technologies. Tripep’s main focuses are: 
– the clinical development of ChronSeal, a wound healing project based on HGF,	
– the clinical development of ChronVac-C®, a therapeutic vaccine against Hepatitis C, 
– preclinical research focusing on the development of therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines against HIV and hepatitis C, 
– the RAS® technology platform 

For more details of the company’s technologies, please refer to the company’s web site at 
www.tripep.se