27 August 2014 - Oncology company Sorrento Therapeutics (NASDAQ:SRNE) reported on Tuesday the receipt of a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 grant to advance an immunotherapy targeting WNT1-Inducible Signaling Protein-1 (WISP1) for the potential treatment of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF).

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase 1 grant was awarded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH),

NIH will support the development of the fully human anti-WISP1 antibodies discovered by Sorrento. The principal investigator on the SBIR grant is Sorrento's senior director of R&D Dr Gunnar F. Kaufmann, who will work closely with Dr Melanie Konigshoff at Comprehensive Pneumology Center (CPC) in Munich Germany.

WISP1 (CCN4) is an autocrine and paracrine extracellular stimulus involved in several detrimental profibrotic processes. Preclinical studies have shown that WISP1 is induced in human lung cells by key profibrotic growth factors, upregulated at the alveolar epithelial surface in IPF as well as causes protein induced hyperplasia and proliferation of alveolar epithelial cells accompanied by increased expression of matrix metalloproteinases and fibroblast-like phenotypic changes.

IPF reportedly increases scarring in the lungs and the patients gradually lose the ability to breathe, leading ultimately to death in two to five years after diagnosis.