SBIR-STTR Award

This The long term goal of this proposal is the development of an intranasal stand alone TLR agonist to treat allergic rhinitis Unlike antigen specific therapy this allergen independent approach will be broadly applicable to a vast array of allergens patients are exposed to Such treatment would provide relief within hours of administration providing short term symptom control and has the potential to deliver long term disease remission via allergen dependent T cell and B cell memory responses The first objective of this proposal is to identify new small molecule TLR agonists via high throughput virtual screening of a large library of commercially available compounds using known TLRMD crystal structures The second objective is to confirm human and murine TLR activity of the hits using HEKTLR cell lines and evaluate a selected set of h TLR agonists for cytokine induction cytotoxicity and ILinhibition in PBMC After lead optimization in Objective two leads will be evaluated in Objective for their ability to modulate The allergic response in an established mouse model of acute allergic pulmonary inflammation The innovation of this proposal lies in using high throughput virtual screening to identify new small molecule TLR agonists and the use of non LPS like TLR agonists for the treatment of allergy