Balancing the scales of immunity
TLA is dedicated to providing an innovative approach to safe treatment of inflammatory disorders. Through its proprietary TLA medical device platform, disease-causing immune cells are identified and filtered from the patient’s blood flow, leaving harmless cells untouched.
The inflammatory loop is thereby interrupted, giving the tissue an opportunity to heal. TLA constitutes a treatment alternative to conventional anti-inflammatory drugs, with a safety profile that allows for long-term use.
Our treatment concept
The TLA column is a medical device product, used for blood filtering in patients with inflammatory disorders. The column is used together with a hemoperfusion machine, which leads a volume of patient blood (approximately 1/3 of the total blood volume) over the column and back to the patient.
During treatment, the patient is connected to the column via a tubing circuit, through needles in each arm. Only inflammatory cells are trapped inside the column and the patient does not lose any blood fluid. One treatment visit takes approximately 90 minutes.
A safe way to inflammatory relief
The TLA column contains a substance (a chemokine), that is a natural protein produced in the tissue during inflammation. Chemokines are used by activated immune cells as an address tag to find their way from the blood stream to the tissue, where they exert their inflammatory function.
By containing the chemokine in the TLA device, the activated immune cells are bound to the column during treatment, rather than responding to the same chemokine in the body. This results in reduced inflammatory burden. Only activated circulating immune cells on their way to participate in the on-going inflammatory response are trapped – other blood cells are left untouched and returned to the patient
Clinical Proof-of-Concept
The first TLA device, referred to as TLA Gut, was designed to address intestinal inflammation in patients with ulcerative colitis. First Proof-of-Concept of TLA Gut was demonstrated in a clinical trial with 23 patients, where 14 patients received active treatment and 9 received placebo (i.e. TLA column not containing chemokine).
The study achieved its goal in demonstrating safe and effective removal of disease-causing cells in these patients, and a larger study is currently being planned to further investigate the clinical efficacy of TLA Gut in patients with ulcerative colitis.
Unmet medical need
Globally, the prevalence of inflammatory diseases such as Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, acute lateral sclerosis (ALS) and rheumatoid arthritis are constantly increasing.
There is a large medical need for safe, innovative approaches to treat these disorders without surgical intervention and without blocking systemic inflammatory pathways.
