Overview

Understanding the role of chemokines and inflammation
Inflammation is a key component of the immune response and serves as one line of defense to infection, irritation or injury as immune system cells attempt to suppress and control an infectious agent (such as bacteria) or to break down and carry away damaged tissue (as in the case of injury).

Inflammation involves a complex series of cellular events that rely on chemical messengers known as chemokines, or CHEMO-attractant cytoKINES, which send out signals to attract white blood cells to the site of disease or injury. Chemokines and other chemoattractants direct inflammatory responses by serving to precisely coordinate the movement of cells of the immune system.

The human chemokine network is made up of more than 50 known chemokine ligands and approximately two dozen identified chemokine receptors. Different chemokines are made in different tissues at different times and different chemokine receptors are expressed on the surface of different types of inflammatory cells. Those cells can only respond to a chemokine in a given organ or tissue if the cell possesses a receptor that specifically recognizes the chemokine that is present in the local environment. In this way, each chemokine-chemokine receptor combination may direct a different inflammatory response and this response can be tailored by the body based on the type of injury, irritation, or other threat.

Focusing on chemokines
As drivers of the inflammatory response, chemokines and their receptors present opportunities for the development of new therapies. ChemoCentryx is the only company focused exclusively on the discovery, development and commercialization of small molecule therapeutics that target the chemokine network.

Since ChemoCentryx's founding, we have developed a set of proprietary drug discovery tools, known collectively as the EnabaLink^® technology suite, specifically designed to unlock the chemokine system's complexity and to accelerate a productive drug discovery program. ChemoCentryx's proprietary EnabaLink drug discovery technologies allow scientists to accurately predict the specific chemokine receptors implicated in a given condition and to identify and optimize small molecule compounds best suited for treatment of the disease. We have leveraged the EnabaLink drug discovery engine to create one of the broadest pipelines of chemokine-based therapeutics in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Each of ChemoCentryx's novel small molecule product candidates is designed to target a specific chemokine receptor, thereby blocking the inappropriate immune system cascade underlying a given disease while leaving the rest of the immune system intact. Our compounds are designed to be highly potent and selective for its intended chemokine receptor target with minimal side effects. In addition, our orally administered small molecules should offer convenience and compliance advantages, as well as lower costs of production over most biological therapies.

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