And on their own websiteNovoron Bioscience, Inc., a private biotech company ... has been awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant under the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The NIH grant totaling $680,000 will fund preclinical studies to evaluate a novel therapeutic approach for promoting remyelination in multiple sclerosis (MS) for two years.
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"We look forward to the opportunity to continue to extend our unique technological approach to CNS disease and assess our capacity to promote remyelination and preserve neuronal viability in multiple sclerosis."
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Under normal conditions, when the brain faces an insult such as trauma to the head or environmental toxicity, oligodendrocytes, the cells responsible for creating the myelin coating, can die and leave an unattended myelin sheath to degrade and fall apart. Under such circumstances, the body has a reserve of cells known as oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs), which readily infiltrate the area of damage and take the place of lost oligodendrocytes, synthesizing new myelin and repairing the damage. However, in MS, persistent myelin debris coupled with the inflammatory consequences of immune infiltration inhibits the ability of OPCs to create new myelin. This is caused by an unwanted activation of a molecule called RhoA, which is the target of Novoron's therapeutic approach.
"Rho and Rho-kinase are well considered targets for multiple sclerosis, but are difficult to effectively inhibit therapeutically in the brain. Novoron's technological foundation relies on our unique approach to targeting RhoA in a fashion that is amenable to disorders of the brain and spinal cord," concluded Dr. Stiles.
Novoron's lead compound, NOVO-117, acts on a previously unknown mediator of RhoA activation in CNS disease, LRP1 (low density lipoprotein-related protein 1). This grant will provide the necessary proof of concept to validate further pre-clinical development of NOVO-117 as an MS therapy.
http://www.novoron.com/company-news/
"Goal of research is to test whether inhibiting Rho kinase via receptor-associated protein will promote remyelination"