F-star Therapeutics (Spring Bank Pharma)

We are a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company engaged in the discovery and development of a novel class of therapeutics using our proprietary small molecule nucleic acid hybrid, or SMNH, chemistry platform. Our SMNH compounds are small segments of nucleic acids that we design to selectively target and modulate the activity of specific proteins implicated in various disease states. We are developing our most advanced SMNH product candidate, SB 9200, for the treatment of viral diseases. We have designed SB 9200 to selectively activate within infected cells the cellular proteins retinoic acid-inducible gene 1, or RIG-I, and nucleotide-binding oligomerization domain-containing protein 2, or NOD2, to inhibit viral replication and to cause the induction of intracellular interferon signaling pathways for antiviral defense. We believe that SB 9200 may play an important role in antiviral therapy by modulating the body’s immune response through its mechanisms of action to fight viral infections.