Research activity in Aomo spans the full range of unmet medical needs including anesthesia, eye diseases, cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and cancers. Aomo strives to develop innovative drug products with full intellectual property rights for the health of people around the world.
Anesthesia Cardiovascular Eye Diseases Neurodegenerative Cancers |
Little innovative progress has been made in anesthesia area in the past decades. The priority of Aomo is to discover and develop safe, effective and fast-acting anesthesia drugs.
Residual Neuromuscular Blockade and Safety Issues Remain Unsolved
The number of inpatient surgeries has reached approximately 320 million in 2017 and 380 million in 2022, respectively, with Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 3.4% from 2017 to 2022. General anesthesia surgeries account for approximately more than 80% of total inpatient surgeries, of which nearly 90% of patients have used neuromuscular blockade agents. Neuromuscular blockade agents are widely used in clinic now.
Neuromuscular blockade agents are one of the three elements of anesthesia, which used to induce tracheal intubation during anesthesia as well as to effectively relieve muscle tension during surgery. The use of neuromuscular blockade agents is a "double-edged sword”, they not only bring convenience to surgery, but also lead to residual neuromuscular blockade, which is a high-risk factor of postoperative pulmonary complications, and independent risk factor for the incidence of postoperative complications and mortality associated within 24-hour after anesthesia. Factors as residual neuromuscular blockade and postoperative pulmonary complications may cause increase of postoperative mortality and are associated with a number of serious adverse clinical outcomes, such as decreased blood pressure, increased risk of acute respiratory events including pulmonary atelectasis, pneumonia, severe hypoxemia, respiratory obstruction and even respiratory failure and reintubation, and other serious complication related to survival and quality-of-life.
Non-selective neuromuscular blockade agents, as cholinesterase inhibitors is a traditional option, in which neostigmine is commonly used in clinic. However, there is “ceiling effect” and cannot reverse deep neuromuscular blockade. And also, after administration of neostigmine, it will produce M-receptor effect, resulting in bradycardia, bronchospasm, and other adverse effects, which need for atropine to antagonize. In conclusion, non-selective neuromuscular blockade agents have lots of adverse effects and cause 14-95% of residual neuromuscular blockade, or even fatal complication after dosing.
The selective neuromuscular blockade agents sugammadex sodium (Bridion®) is a 1st targeting neuromuscular blockade agents, and it is a milestone in anesthesia. Sugammadex sodium can effectively reverse deep and moderate neuromuscular blockade, but also results recurrence of neuromuscular blockade (recurarization), allergy, prolongation of the QT, and bleeding, and other many safety concerns as such 9.4% residual neuromuscular blockade.
There is a huge unmet clinical need of new neuromuscular blockade agents, which should be more effective and safer, to avoid or reduce serious adverse reactions and complications, reduce morbidity, and improve poor prognosis of patients.
No Effective Selective Agent to Reverse Cisatracurium-Induced Neuromuscular Blockade
In 2022, cisatracurium besilate accounts for one-third (32.6%) of market share of muscle relaxants in China. However, selective neuromuscular reversal agent sugammadex sodium cannot effectively reverse cisatracurium-induced neuromuscular blockade. There are urgent clinical needs for selective neuromuscular reversal agents to safely and effectively reverse cisatracurium-induced neuromuscular blockade.
Safe and Effective Anesthetics with Rapid Onset and Recovery are Needed
Anesthesia is a medical treatment that prevents patients from feeling pain during procedures like clinical invasive/non-invasive examinations and surgeries. Development of ideal sedative/anesthetic drugs, which have properties of rapid onset and recovery, adequate sedation and anesthesia, high safe index, good suppression of various stress reactions, is the main direction of development and efforts in field of anesthesia and is also the hotspot and difficulty in anesthesia products development.
Cardiovascular diseases and Aomo solutions
Cardiovascular diseases are still the leading cause of death across the world. Cardiovascular events are usually serious, life-threatening events, drugs for acute ischemic stroke are still limited in clinical.
Lack of FDA Approved or Guideline-Recommended Neuroprotective Agents
Ischemic stroke is the second leading cause of death worldwide, which is characterized by high morbidity, disability, mortality and recurrence. Compared with revascularization therapy, which is limited by time windows and contraindications, early application of neuroprotective agents has potential of more widely application in patients with acute ischemic stroke. However, due to repeated failures in clinical trials of neuroprotective agents, and there is no suitable drug for ischemic stroke patients who are not suitable for revascularization. For near two decades, no neuroprotective agents have been approval by FDA or recommended by guidelines.
Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a relatively common autosomal dominant cardiomyopathy in cardiology, characterized by high prevalence, low diagnostic rate and high lethality and disability. The current treatment of HCM cannot significantly improve the progression of disease and the prognosis of HCM. There is an urgent need for drugs which can effectively improve HCM treatment.
The prevalence of eye diseases affecting the anterior and posterior segment of eye is increasing, patients with eye diseases suffer from uncomfortableness, visual impairment or even blindness. Aom0187 is under development for treatment of dry eye disease.
New Effective Targeted Therapeutic Drugs for Dry Eye Disease are Wanted
The number of patients with eye diseases continues increasing due to global aging, longer use time on electronic devices, and lack of knowledge about healthy vision. The demand for ophthalmic drug will continue to increase. Unfortunately, the current treatment cannot effectively cure dry eye disease, only alleviate of the condition and symptoms. There are no effective targeted therapeutic drugs for dry eye disease at present.
Neurodegenerative diseases are a heterogeneous group of disorders that are characterized by the progressive degeneration of the structure and function of the central nervous system or peripheral nervous system. Common neurodegenerative diseases include Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
Cancer is the leading cause of death worldwide, according for nearly one in six deaths. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are targeted therapies which are used to treat many kinds of cancer. But tyrosine kinase inhibitors cannot cure cancer, they can only put cancer into long-term remission or help people with certain cancers to live longer. Diarrhoea is a common side effect after treatment with TKIs. Aomo strives to develop innovative drugs for treatment of most cancers and eliminate common side effects caused by existing cancer therapies. Aomo is developing products for cancer treatment, which are currently under screening.
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