Date: 2013-11-25
Type of information: Grant
Company: Prosensa (The Netherlands) Newcastle University (UK)
Investors: European Commission’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7)
Amount: € 6 million
Funding type: grant
Planned used: This new FP7 research grant totals approximately € 6 million to support the development of imaging biomarkers for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).
Others: * On November 25, 2013, Prosensa, a Dutch biopharmaceutical company focusing on rare diseases with a high unmet medical need, and Newcastle University have announced the award of a second Framework Programme 7 (FP7) research grant from the European Commission. The project – “Developing imaging technologies for therapeutic interventions in rare diseases” – will be known as “BIOIMAGE-NMD” and is expected to run three and a half years.
The project will have three specific objectives:
1) To develop a new generation of muscle diffusion Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).
2) To provide a proof of principle in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) that simultaneous MRI/MRSI (Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopic Imaging) can be used as a biomarker to monitor therapeutic efficacy in clinical trials in neuromuscular diseases.
3) To develop a novel simultaneous Positron Emission Tomography (PET)/MRI technology to advance innovative drug development programmes for personalised medicines based on Antisense Oligonucleotide technology.
BIOIMAGE-NMD will be conducting MRI scans in a number of exon skipping drug candidates, including PRO053, which is currently in Phase I/II clinical development. The compound induces exon 53 skipping in the dystrophin gene and could be suitable for up to 8% of all DMD patients.
The pan-European BIOIMAGE-NMD consortium includes leading expert centers in DMD already working together in another recently awarded FP7 project called SCOPE-DMD (www.scope-dmd.eu) as well as additional partners with strong expertise and experience in bio-imaging. The SCOPE-DMD project, which was initiated earlier this year, was also awarded € 6 million as announced previously. This FP7 project aims to evaluate Prosensa’s exon 45 skipping drug candidate, PRO045, in an innovatively designed clinical proof-of-concept study in boys with DMD.
The academic partners in the BIOIMAGE-NMD project are Newcastle University as the coordinating partner, and University College London (UCL) in the United Kingdom; the Institute of Myology in France; the Leiden University Medical Centre in The Netherlands; Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (UCSC) in Italy; and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KULeuven) in Belgium. These academic centers are working alongside a number of industrial partners including Prosensa, SCITO, a French company specialized in the development of computer solutions for medical imaging, and Consultants for Research in Imaging and Spectroscopy (CRIS).
Therapeutic area: Rare diseases - Neuromuscular diseases
