JERUSALEM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--BioLineRx (NASDAQ: BLRX)(TASE: BLRX), a biopharmaceutical development company, announced today that following promising pre-clinical data, EDP-14, for the treatment of severe and persistent asthma, has been added to the Company’s main therapeutic pipeline. The project is now named BL-9010. Previously, the project was developed under BioLineRx’s Early Development Program. BL-9010, a novel bi-specific antibody treatment for severe and persistent asthma, targets and links together two immunological modulators - IgE and CD300a. Allergen-bound IgE activates cells involved in allergic responses, such as mast cells, while CD300a inhibits immune responses. Professor Francesca Levi-Schaffer from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the inventor of BL-9010, found that CD300a is expressed on mast cells and that linking IgE with CD300a using a bi-specific antibody leads to potent inhibition of allergic reactions characteristic of asthma. In murine models of experimental asthma, BL-9010 significantly blocked allergic responses. Importantly, this could be reproduced in human mast cells, where BL-9010 was shown to inhibit the allergic reaction of these cells in-vitro. The human mast cells were activated by IgE molecules from allergic patients and by specific allergens, mimicking the human disease, while BL-9010 prevented the release of allergy-mediating substances by the cells.
