Empowered Patient Podcast Modulating the Wnt Signaling Pathway to Treat Specific Injury or Organ with Craig Parker Surrozen
Craig Parker is the Chief Executive Officer at Surrozen. Their research in the Wnt pathway and proteins identified these are critical to maintaining tissues in our body and are found in tissues as diverse as the lung, intestine, liver, sensory hair cells, and the eye. The company is first targeting a patient population with a severe alcoholic injury to the liver who are not eligible for transplant but would benefit from regeneration in their liver.
Craig explains, "It really starts with a signal outside the cell that gets transmitted inside the cell by this Wnt signaling pathway, which in turn activates a number of genes that are responsible for these processes, like tissue repair or embryonic development, or renewal of stem cells."
"The Wnt proteins actually don't dissolve very well in the circulation, and they really only act within a few cells distance from where they're produced. What made this pathway very difficult to try to modulate for therapeutic use is that these proteins, you can't just copy one of these proteins and inject it and have it activate this path in a distanced cell. These proteins are quite unique in the way they only work one or two cells away from where they're produced."
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