http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/News/2010/News/WTX062534.htm
Trust supports development of drugs to treat spinal cord injury
23 August 2010
The Wellcome Trust has awarded a second Seeding Drug Discovery Award to Dr Jonathan Corcoran from the Wolfson Centre for Age Related Diseases at King’s College London, to develop new drugs that can be taken orally to treat spinal cord injury.
Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes damage to the nerves that carry signals from the spine to the brain resulting in reduced mobility or feeling and, in severe cases, partial or total paralysis. There are currently no therapies available that can repair the damaged nerves to recover function and mobility.
Dr Corcoran's group have previously shown that small molecules known as retinoids can stimulate nerves to grow back by inducing a specific pattern of protein expression in the injured nerve cells, which can lead to functional recovery in rodent models.
The award, valued at £3.5 million over 42 months, will support the team in identifying a retinoid drug candidate, which can be taken into a clinical trial of SCI patients in the third year.
Dr Corcoran said, "We have spent many years showing the utility of retinoids in axonal outgrowth and I am delighted that the Wellcome Trust have funded this research to take a small molecule from the bench all the way into the clinic."
Rick Davis, Business Development Manager at the Wellcome Trust, said: "We are pleased to support this project, which addresses an important area of unmet medical need and we hope will pave the way to a brighter future for patients with spinal cord injuries".
The team includes Dr Barret Kalindjian who is a medicinal chemist already based in Dr Corcoran's lab and Professor Thomas Carlstedt, a nerve surgeon at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who will carry out the clinical trial.
Early research for this project was part-funded by an award from the King's Business Futures Fund and the Wellcome Trust, which enabled the team to demonstrate that one of the retinoids discovered could be taken orally.
Dr Mike Shaw from King's Business commented: "We are delighted to have been able to support this excellent research both through the King's Business Futures Fund and dedicated commercial support. We look forward to working with Dr Corcoran and the Wellcome Trust to develop and commercialise this molecule."
Dr Corcoran's first award, which has a year left to run, was for £3.1 million to develop small molecules for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. The project has already generated intellectual property, which the team are hoping to commercialise.