Serenity is a therapeitucs company focusing on cellular stress pathways. Their premise is that when cells encounter a stressful environment — whether it be a lack of oxygen, increase in temperature, or exposure to a toxin — they express a myriad of stress-induced proteins, like heat shock proteins (HSPs), to maintain the cell’s order. In some instances, cells also secrete and export these signals to communicate with immune cells to avoid cellular destruction and inflammation, and maintain self-antigen tolerance. The benefits of exercise, sauna-use, and fevers, have all pointed towards stress-induced signals that can be used to treat diseases. Loaded with this insight and leveraging recent academic research and tools in stress, genomics, proteomics, and systems immunology Serenity is developing a pipeline of new medicines that will address urgent unmet needs for autoimmune disorders. They call their platform StressTek™ — enabling therapeutic targets from endogenous cellular stress pathways.

Their lead candidate SER-101 is targeting Lupus through this platform. The company will continue to explore the interface of stress and immunology to develop the next generation of StressTek™ therapeutics.Serenity’s lead therapeutic for Lupus, SER-101, is shown to preserve kidney function in a lupus mouse model and was demonstrated as safe in a phase I/IIa clinical trial.