Panoptes Pharma Ges.m.b.H, an Austrian biotechnology company launched in 2013, has announced that the treatment of autoimmune uveitis models with its experimental drug, PP-001, significantly inhibits abnormal blood vessel growth in the back of the eye. The company hopes to develop the lead candidate for uveitis in order to offer highly efficacious and well-tolerated medicaments to provide a better quality of life. According to the company, the compound was originally discovered through a “structure-based docking approach with several million virtual compounds” from which approximately 300 hits were synthesized eventually leading to the optimized PP-001. The company have indicated that the drug is a highly specific nanomolar inhibitor of “an essential enzyme of the de novo pyrimidine pathway leading to inhibition of expression of IFN-y and IL-17, two hallmark cytokines of Th1 and Th17 cells responsible for autoimmune uveitis and other inflammatory diseases”. The specific target of PP-001 was not identified by the company.