Disease Focus

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

TBI is a major cause of death and disability among a predominantly young male population, mostly victims of automobile accidents. Annually, within the U.S. alone, head trauma is the cause of about two million emergency room visits, roughly 475,000 hospital admissions, nearly 52,000 deaths and approximately 80,000 cases of severe long-term disability (e.g. functional and cognitive disorders, learning disabilities). The estimated annual TBI market is over $ 500 million each in the U.S. and Europe. Currently, there is no effective therapy available to treat this condition. VAS203 aims to stop and prevent the life threatening rise of intracranial pressure (ICP) with a novel pharmacological approach. In principle, taking all pre-clinical experiments into account, it can be expected that VAS203 will be by far superior to the compounds targeting solely the brain tissue which do not consider the primary trigger of ICP rise. This approach would be the first pharmacological therapy in this indication with great medical need, and provides the basis for a high market penetration.

Peripheral Arterial Occlusive Diseases (PAOD)

Patients affected by PAOD represent a high-risk population for coronary artery diseases and fatal strokes. In the USA alone, up to 10 million people suffer from PAOD with severe leg pain (claudication) or non-healing ulcers (critical limb ischemia). vasopharm is developing a novel and innovative approach to prevent and block progression of atherosclerotic diseases. The NOX inhibitor VAS2870 represents a new class of compounds identified by vasopharm.