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ARTICLE | Emerging Company Profile

Medella: RAMPing up

Medella uses RAMP3 to restore adrenomedullin activity as a target in cancer

January 31, 2011 8:00 AM UTC

While adrenomedullin has been implicated in the progression of cancer, it was abandoned by pharma years ago due to safety problems stemming from a poor understanding of the target's biology. Medella Therapeutics Ltd. believes it has cracked the code by targeting receptor activity-modifying protein 3, which is a regulator of adrenomedullin signaling.

In the 1990s, inhibiting adrenomedullin (ADM; AM) in cancer cell lines was shown to reduce cell proliferation. But ADM also was found to function in a wide variety of normal cellular processes, making it a poor therapeutic target...