The neurological disease is estimated to affect more than 10 million people worldwide.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) has awarded $6 million to Lario Therapeutics to fund a preclinical program of Parkinson’s disease (PD) research.
The company will work with Professor Richard Wade Martins and the Oxford Parkinson’s Centre to evaluate its compounds in cutting-edge patient-derived stem cell models of Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease, estimated to affect more than 10 million people worldwide, is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes tremors, slowness and stiffness in movements, problems with walking and balance, as well as depression and memory loss.
As part of the program, researchers will investigate selective CaV2.3 calcium channel inhibition as a novel disease-modifying approach to treat neurological disorders.
CaV2.3 is a voltage-gated calcium channel that is localized primarily in nerve terminals, specialized regions of neurons that release neurotransmitters, and in dendrites, structures of neurons that receive electrical messages, as well as in neuroendocrine cells, which make and release hormones into the bloodstream.
Previous preclinical experimental studies have shown that calcium channels may be involved in the pathology of PD, as deletion of CaV2.3 may have a protective effect against the progression of neurological disease.
If successful, the study could develop a new treatment to prevent the neuronal loss that causes Parkinson’s disease, “which would provide an important new treatment option for patients,” said Tom Ortiz, Lario Therapeutics’ chief scientific officer.
Henning Steinhagen, co-founder and CEO of Lario Therapeutics, commented: “This grant will help us rapidly bring our Cav2.3 program into the clinic and advance our goal of providing new and effective treatment options for people with Parkinson’s disease.”
“We look forward to seeing the results of Lario’s research into CaV2.3 as a novel disease-modifying approach for Parkinson’s disease,” said Gaia Skibinski, MJFF’s research program director.
In July of this year, MJFF collaborated with Parkinson’s UK’s Virtual Biotechnology Programme to Awarded $5.2 million to Mission Therapeutics to advance the development of a potential early-stage treatment for PD and support an ongoing Phase 1 program evaluating the company’s small molecule drug, MTX325, in patients with the neurodegenerative disease.
