The central melanocortin system is one of the body’s key regulators of metabolism and energy balance.
 

Located in the brain, it helps control appetite, energy expenditure, and how the body uses and stores nutrients. This system acts as a metabolic control center that continuously responds to signals about hunger, nutrient levels, and energy demands to maintain a stable body weight. In this way, it acts like a thermostat and changes the body’s metabolic set-point as needed.
 
Because of its central role in metabolism, the melanocortin pathway is an important target for developing new therapies aimed at improving metabolic health. Our research has identified the key molecular features needed to safely and effectively target this system, dialing the thermostat’s set-point up and down to offer new hope to millions of people with metabolic disorders. Using this knowledge, we are developing a proprietary pipeline of peptide therapies designed to modulate the central melanocortin 3 and 4 receptors (MC3R and MC4R). Because the melanocortin system influences many aspects of weight regulation, this differentiated approach has unique potential to address a wide range of important and underserved metabolic indications.
 
Our lead assets include 710GO, an oral dual MC3R/MC4R agonist entering a Phase 1 study as a next generation anti-obesity treatment that induces higher quality, more durable weight loss, and mifomelatide, a dual MC3R/MC4R antagonist being evaluated in a Phase 2 clinical study to prevent and treat cachexia in patients with advanced cancers. Cancer cachexia is a devasting wasting syndrome that can hinder patients’ ability to withstand chemotherapy and impact survival.
 
Beyond obesity and cachexia, our pipeline includes first-in-class MC4R-selective and MC3R-selective agonists with the potential to address multiple metabolic indications with significant unmet needs, including type 2 diabetes, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis, opioid use disorder, sarcopenia, polycystic ovary syndrome, muscle retention adjuvant, and menopausal weight maintenance.