Haoma Medica has announced the completion of a first-in-human trial for NaQuinate. A naphthoquinone carboxylic acid, it is being developed as a novel orally administered therapeutic for osteoporosis.
Initiated last year, the study was conducted on healthy adults who were studied single and multiple doses of NaQuinate. The main aim was to assess the safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics.
Dr Cenk Oguz, Haoma Medica’s Chief Medical Officer, said, “We are delighted that the first-in-human study has completed its last dosing. There were no significant safety or tolerability concerns up to the highest doses tested which underlines our expectation that NaQuinate is safe and well tolerated.”
Dr Steve Deacon, Haoma Medica’s CEO, said, “Our pre-clinical research has revealed an exciting feature of NaQuinate where it appears to have the capacity to work in harmony with the body’s natural response to weight bearing exercise to synergistically enhance bone formation when and where required – now that would be a ‘smart’ drug.”
He said that together with the safety data from this first-in-human study, this supports the potential that NaQuinate treatment could offer a novel, safe and smart therapeutic approach to bone disorders like osteoporosis and better maintain healthy skeletal aging.
Know Osteoporosis & NaQuinate
According to the International Osteoporosis Foundation, about 200 million suffer from the disease worldwide.
Osteoporosis is a silent disease often not presenting with any signs or symptoms until a fracture occurs. It thus remains an underdiagnosed and undertreated disease.
Osteoporosis results in bone loss and changes in bone quality and strength that occurs through the normal aging process leading to fragile bones. Fragile bones lead to fractures, which progresses into a downward spiral of disability, loss of independence and increased mortality with considerable social and economic burden. Fragility fractures are a major obstacle to healthy aging. Worldwide there is a fragility fracture every 3 seconds.
Earlier studies have shown NaQuinate to protect against reduction in bone quality and quantity that occurs in response to ovariectomy in rodent models.
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In a mechanical mouse loading model, a surrogate for weight-bearing exercise, NaQuinate synergistically enhanced the body’s normal response to loading by forming bone, targeting relevant cortical bone regions. This synergistic interaction between NaQuinate and mechanical loading suggests the functional use of bones’ mechanostat, a term which describes how mechanical loading affects bone structure, in the regulation of bone mass and architecture. NaQuinate is currently being evaluated using a curative model of osteoporosis versus a bisphosphonate and a loading model versus an anabolic; results are expected early next year.
(With inputs from The OnLook News Research Bureau)
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