Xylyx Bio awarded $2.45M NIH SBIR grant from NIDDK to facilitate development of effective drugs for fibrotic liver disease

Award supports the development of a cell-based assay platform to help scientists discover and test drug candidates for liver fibrosis

BROOKLYN, N.Y., Sept. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Xylyx Bio, Inc., a regenerative medicine company developing pioneering solutions for tissue and organ modeling and repair, announced today that it has been awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to advance commercial development of its InMatrico^® disease modeling and drug testing platform to help scientists discover and test drug candidates for liver fibrosis.

Fibrosis is a prevalent disease process underlying multiple chronic liver diseases, including alcohol-associated liver disease and metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). MASLD affects 100 million people in the U.S. and can lead to cirrhosis, liver failure, and the need for liver transplantation. Approved drugs have shown limited efficacy in treating liver fibrosis, underscoring the inadequacy of current liver fibrosis models and the necessity of better drug testing assays.

Xylyx Bio’s InMatrico^® liver fibrosis cell-based assay platform aims to address the lack of predictive in-vitro drug testing assays and accelerate the development of improved treatment options for millions of patients with fibrotic liver disease.

The award will provide $2,453,331 to support development of an assay platform that integrates patient-derived fibrotic liver extracellular matrix, hepatic stellate cells, Kupffer cells, and hepatocytes to accelerate anti-fibrotic drug development.

Dr. Evelyn Aranda, Director of Applications at Xylyx Bio, stated: “Cell-based assays performed ‘in matrico’ – in the physiologically-relevant, tissue-specific extracellular matrix – improve predictiveness, reduce dependence on animal models, and de-risk pre-clinical decision-making. Our goal is to help reduce the massive costs associated with late-stage drug attrition due to poor efficacy and facilitate the development of effective drugs for millions worldwide with fibrotic liver disease.”

This grant is supported by the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1R44DK139877. The content of this press release is solely the responsibility of the author and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.

About Xylyx Bio: Xylyx Bio is a regenerative medicine company developing groundbreaking solutions for tissue and organ modeling and repair. The company’s InMatrico^® Kits & Assays are available for physiologically-relevant disease modeling and drug testing.

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