Chinook is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering, developing and commercializing precision medicines for rare, severe chronic kidney diseases.

Chronic kidney diseases are a severe and growing worldwide problem with a lack of effective treatments often leading to dialysis, transplantation, and high costs to health care systems. Up to 10% of the global population suffers from kidney disease and in the U.S. alone, kidney diseases account for over $130 billion in annual costs.

Drug development in kidney diseases is experiencing a resurgence due to greater understanding of disease biology, utilization of novel translational platforms and patient stratification tools, and emergence of accelerated regulatory pathways based on surrogate endpoints. These dynamics have converged to create attractive opportunities for the development of precision therapies.

At Chinook, we are focused on rare, severe chronic kidney diseases with well-defined clinical pathways. Our lead clinical program is atrasentan, a potent and selective endothelin A (ETA) receptor antagonist. We are currently conducting the phase 3 ALIGN trial of atrasentan for IgA nephropathy (IgAN), phase 2 AFFINITY basket trial for proteinuric glomerular diseases, and phase 2 ASSIST crossover trial for individuals with IgAN on stable doses of a renin-angiotensin system inhibitor (RASi) and an SGLT2 inhibitor (SGLT2i). Our second product candidate, zigakibart (BION-1301), is an anti-APRIL monoclonal antibody in phase 3 and phase 1/2 development for patients with IgAN. Our third product candidate is CHK-336, an oral small molecule lactate dehydrogenase (LDHA) inhibitor that is in phase 1 development for the treatment of primary and idiopathic hyperoxaluria. In addition, we are conducting research programs in other rare, severe chronic kidney diseases. We seek to build our pipeline by leveraging insights from kidney single cell RNA sequencing and large chronic kidney disease, or CKD, patient cohorts that have been comprehensively panomically phenotyped, with retained biosamples and prospective clinical follow-up, to discover and develop therapeutic candidates with mechanisms of action targeted against key kidney disease pathways.

Our Purpose & Values

We discover and develop precision therapies to preserve kidney function and make dialysis and transplant unnecessary for people living with kidney disease.

 

Chinook Values graphic