Hepione Therapeutics is developing novel vaccine and antibody therapies - anti-averdose vaccines and antibodies - to reduce and prevent deaths from opioid and other drug overdoses. The rate of fatal drug overdoses has been steadily growing in the US - doubling in the past decade - and has now become the 6th largest cause of death - taking more lives annually than diabetes , colon-rectal cancer), influenza/pneumonia, and motor vehicle accidents. Treatments are limited: few medical interventions exist effectively to counter drugs that can lead to overdose. Those that do - naloxone for opioids, for example - require access to the drug nearby and are also much less effective against new generations of synthetic opioids flooding the illicit markets. The combination of more potent drugs and societal problems make direct medical intervention in overdose problematic. Using the firm's unique vaccine platform, Hepione Therapeutics is addressing development of novel vaccine and antibody therapies to prevent deaths from opioid and other drug overdoses. Vaccines and antibodies provide long-term protection that is always with a potential victim, removing the dependence on compliance and availability of treatments. While current technologies have failed to produce useful immunotherapeutics against small molecules like drugs of addiction, in pre- clinical models of overdose, the Hepione's proprietary technology has. been shown to produce substantial protection. Hepione Therapeutics has been working on a focused program to develop anti-fentanyl overdose vaccines and antibodies. The firm's platform can be used robustly and reliably to generate specific antibodies to small molecule compounds. In the short-term, the intent and objective is to use this technology to generate long half-life, anti-fentanyl monoclonal antibodies for use in passive immunotherapy. Over the long-haul, the effort will be ro work on development of a vaccine to mediate active immunotherapy
