Company: ARVN
Filing Date: 2025-02-11
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001655759-25-000016
Chunk: 94

Company: ARVINAS, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-02-11
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 94
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 associated with proteins that cannot be addressed by existing small molecule therapies. 

Deliverability 

We have developed PROTAC targeted protein degraders that are capable of being delivered orally, intravenously, subcutaneously and intrathecally, among other routes of administration, as well as PROTAC targeted protein degraders that are able to penetrate the blood brain barrier after oral administration. The multiple routes of delivery for our PROTAC targeted protein degraders potentially provide many attractive clinical dosing options. For example, oral delivery can offer a differentiating, competitive and commercial advantage over other therapeutic approaches such as gene-based medicines which require parenteral administration. Further, oral administration avoids risks of adverse events associated with intravenous or intramuscular administration, such as the potential for infection and blood clots at the infusion site. 

Versatility 

We believe our PROTAC targeted protein degraders may have potential application in a wide range of therapeutic areas because the E3 ligases we currently target are expressed widely across tissue types. Ligands that bind to some proteins may be of only weak affinity. However, we believe that our PROTAC technology will allow the degradation of proteins through such low affinity active binding sites or non-functional binding sites. Our ability to design weak binding PROTAC targeted protein degraders that nonetheless initiate rapid ubiquitination and subsequent degradation of targeted proteins has the potential to expand the number of disease-causing proteins targeted for drug development to include undruggable targets. We believe that rendering these targets druggable for the first time represents the true breadth and potential of our PROTAC Discovery Engine. 

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We have demonstrated that non-functional binding sites, analogous to those that may be present on proteins considered undruggable, can be used to target proteins for degradation by PROTAC targeted protein degraders. The figure below depicts a structural model of the Abl tyrosine kinase. This protein kinase possesses an enzymatic active site that is inhibited by the marketed small molecule, imatinib. The Abl kinase also has a second, non-functional active site, called an allosteric site, in its structure that can bind a different small molecule, named GNF-2, which despite binding allosterically (with a relatively weak KD of 500 nM), inhibits only the wild type protein (C-Abl), but not BCR-Abl-a mutated form of Abl implicated in chronic myelogenous leukemia.

When GNF-2 is converted into a PROTAC targeted protein degrader and used