Pharmaceuticals
Neuren brain injury treatment goes forward
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Neuren Pharmaceuticals Limited (NEU) announced today that its agreement with the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, (“Walter Reed”) based in Washington DC, to develop the Company’s second lead compound, NNZ-2566, as a therapy for traumatic brain injury (“TBI”) has been expanded. Under the current agreement, Walter Reed funds half of the preclinical research relating to NNZ-2566, with Neuren retaining all future commercial rights outside the US military.
The company advised that preclinical results from the NNZ-2566 studies showed that the benefit of administration following injury has increased from a 50% reduction in neurological deficit to a 70% reduction with longer drug exposure.
Walter Reed added it has developed a specialised model to predict clinical outcome in TBI by utilising an easy to detect early clinical event that may potentially be a quicker and more cost effective method than currently used in clinical trials.
Neuren has been selected to work with Walter Reed to explore the value of this model as a simpler model for testing TBI therapies in human clinical trials, the company added.
Mr David Clarke, CEO of Neuren, noted that previous results from testing showed a 50% reduction in impaired behavioural outcome and as a result justified progression into a human clinical trials programme.
“The latest data confirms this and now shows 70% effectiveness using a longer drug exposure,
“This, along with the previous finding that NNZ-2566 down-regulates microglia which leads to a reduction in the critical inflammatory effect in these types of injuries, increases our confidence in moving this project into human clinical trials,” added Mr Clarke.
Mr Clarke finished by noting that the group has already ventured into discussions with the US Army for the third stage, or clinical trials.
