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Irish start-up Inflazome has received $ 1 million in funding from the Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) to help develop a brain imaging probe for Parkinson's, as well as a new clbad of medicines for the disease.
The fund injection will support a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) imaging technique that will help Inflazome develop small molecule drugs that target NLRP3, a protein complex or "inflammasome" suspected to be involved in the harmful inflammatory processes of Parkinson's disease and other diseases neurodegenerative diseases.
More specifically, this money will be used to finance the development of a PET tracer that will identify the presence of inflammations of NLRP3, which are part of the innate immune system and serve as a defense against pathogens.
In some diseases, including Parkinson's disease, it is thought that the inflammasome starts to function incorrectly and activates even if there is no pathogen to fight, resulting in the destruction of neurons in the body. brain.
The hope is that giving drugs that block the activation of NLRP3 in the brain can prevent the loss of brain cells and, hence, the loss of motor function, which is the main symptom of Parkinson's disease. No drugs on the market prevent the loss of brain cells in Parkinson's patients, with current treatments focusing on symptom management.
Inflazome says that the non-invasive PET tracer will be able to image inflammation of the brain induced by the inflammasome and show if NLRP3-targeted drugs will bind to inflammasomes as expected.
The PET tracer will also be used to select patients for inclusion in "at the appropriate stage" clinical trials of Parkinson's disease, according to biotechnology, and this should increase the chances of showing a positive result if the drugs are effective. This will also help Inflazome to determine what doses are needed for patients participating in larger clinical trials in the future.
The founders of Inflazome – Matt Cooper of the University of Queensland Brisbane and the immunologist Luke O'Neill of Trinity College Dublin – have shown in previous studies that an inhibitor of NLRP3 called MCC950, administered orally once a day, had interrupted the development of Parkinson's disease in several animal models. disease. This work was also funded by the MJFF.
MCC950 was originally a Pfizer drug tested for rheumatoid arthritis, but never exceeded phase 1b development, according to a recent Nature article.
Biotech has finalized a second funding of 40 million euros (about $ 46 million) in order to submit its NLRP3 inflammase drugs to clinical trials in order to treat diseases characterized by chronic inflammation of low intensity.
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