autism, retts and nnz-2566

Take the following pieces of information presented by posters on the NEU thread;

1. Peace posted an article titled, Advocates, Big Pharma Make Push For Autism Drugs [March 20, 2012]. The article discusses a "$38.7 million effort [which] is being spearheaded by Autism Speaks, King’s College London and Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche".
2. Malmanu discovered, in an article in EP Vantage, that Neuren was listed as one of the companies connected with the project.
3. Supertramp obliged us all by forwarding a reply from Larry Glass which included a comment on funding for Retts Syndrome. Glass stated that Neuren were actively pursuing grant funding for the Rett clinical trials.

Could the grant funding for Neuren's Rett clinical trial be sourced from the $38.7m war chest? It's certainly intriguing and would be totally unsurprising.

The Autism Speaks group is one of the collaborators in the Phase I/II trial for the Treatment of Rett Syndrome with rhIGF-1 at the Boston Childrens Hospital. IGF-1 is of course otherwise known as glypromate. The excitement around the trial centres upon pre-clinical work by Professor Sur and his team who discovered that the Retts condition was reversible in mouse studies. The connection with Neuren relates to the fact that NNZ-2566 is a synthetic analogue of IGF-1 [the connection between Neuren and glypromate in clinical trials is another longer story].

I have been researching the connection between IGF-1 used by Professor Sur in the mouse trials and NNZ-2566. Obviously there are key similarities - Bell Potter make the point, in their profile on Neuren dated 18 October 2011, that "effectively the Sur team had used Neuren’s drug". There are, however, important differences which make NNZ-2566 such an exciting prospect in the search for a cure to Retts Syndrome. The key differences include;
- NNZ-2566 readily crosses the blood brain barrier
- NNZ-2566 is orally available
- NNZ-2566 [not only crosses the blood brain barrier] but also retains and seems to improve on the mechanisms of action of glypromate.

If the influential Autism Speaks group are excited about the treatment of Rett Syndrome with rhIGF-1, one can only imagine that they would be keenly interested in the NNZ-2566 oral trial for Retts Synfrome and mild TBI.