Targeting Immune Dysfunction in ALS

KOYA's lead experimental therapy is KOYA three oh two.

What is KOYA three oh two and, and how does it work?

KOYA three oh two is a proprietary combination of a low dose interleukin two with a CTLA-4Ig.

What it does is what differentiates us, and it's pretty elegant on how we g-- we're able to do that.

The one component, low dose interleukin two, increases Treg numbers and Treg function.

But what happens in diseases like ALS is these are highly inflammatory diseases.

The macro system of the patient is highly inflammatory.

Like activated myeloid cells are producing inflammatory cytokines.

So the milieu is equally inflammatory.

When you restore the functions of Tregs and put them back in this inflammatory environment, they tend to revert back to becoming dysfunctional again.

So you're taking and fixing something, but you're kind of putting it back in a toxic environment.

It's not gonna last too long.

Uh, oversimplifying a bit here, but that's the k-analogy.

That's where the CTLA-4Ig comes in.

It acts on a different pathway, the CD eighty eighty six pathway, quietens down the activated myeloid cells, quietens down the inflammatory cytokines that are being produced, therefore keeping the macrophage less inflammatory.

That environment is now ins-- from go-- goes from being pro-inflammatory to anti-inflammatory.

Now, in that environment, the Tregs that have become functional through the IL-two remain functional in a sustained manner.

And we have seen evidence of this both in our preclinical studies and in our small clinical IIT studies that as long as this combination IL-2 plus CTLA-4 is on board, which is our Qoya-302, uh, the T reg function seems to be maintained.

When you stop therapy, it again drops back down.

Is the expectation that this would slow progression of the disease, or is there reason to believe the therapy could halt or even reverse the disease?

There is reason to believe we can halt progression, definitely reason to believe we can slow progression.

There isn't a clear scientific rationale to believe we can reverse progression.

So, uh, so I'm not gonna say we can because there isn't really a strong scientific rationale to believe we can undo the damage that has been done, right? If nerve cells have been damaged, uh, it's a different, it's a different, different, uh, uh, bar to undo the damage.

But what we do believe, and that's kind of our vision at Qoya, is to prevent the patients from getting worse.

So in the analogy I used before, let's say a patient has a weak right arm.