Company Profile

In January 2011, Taligen Therapeutics Inc was acquired by Alexion Pharmaceuticals Inc. (another SBIR firm). With facilities also in Colorado, Taligen had been a biotechnology company at the forefront of one of the new frontiers of anti-inflammatory and autoimmune drug development, complement system regulation. Taligen’s lead technology was directed at inhibiting factor B, an essential component in the amplification of complement activation. Inhibition of factor B down-regulates complement activation, thereby dampening the inflammatory response.. Taligen’s second technology was able to target complement inhibitors specifically to sites where excessive complement activation is occurring, thereby controlling inflammation at a specific tissue site. Rapidly advancing multiple clinical candidates and building a deep product candidate pipeline, Taligen’s lead therapeutic candidates are recombinant fusion proteins and monoclonal antibodies focused on orphan diseases, age-related macular degeneration (AMD), and severe inflammatory diseases. Taligen’s therapeutics precisely and selectively target key pathways in the complement system, particularly the amplification loop, offering a unique way to interrupt disease processes at the ‘right’ point. Based on local and targeted regulation of the undesirable effects of excessive amplification of the complement system, Taligen’s platform had been built upon recent discoveries that have shown that excessive activity of the complement amplification loop is central to the pathogenesis of a number of important diseases. The effort was to use the firm's proprietary technology and unique capabilities to develop novel therapeutics that precisely target sites of disease and intervene before over activity of the complement amplification loop initiates harmful inflammatory responses. With Taligen’s founders and scientific collaborators having made some of the groundbreaking discoveries relating to the genetic drivers and biological processes that lead to over activation and excessive amplification of the complement system in chronic, life-threate