Pain Therapeutics Swoops Up $4 Million For Alzheimer’s Blood Test
Austin-based drugmaker, Pain Therapeutics, has now announced that it has received two grants totalling $4 million to support the development of a blood-based diagnostic for Alzheimer’s disease and its fentanyl-based Fenrock transdermal patch for treating severe pain.
It has landed a $2.2 million research-and-development grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and a $1.8 million research grant from the National Institutes of Health.
This is the second NIH grant for Pain Therapeutics’ Alzheimer’s test in two years. It received a $1.7 million grant in September 2015.
“Finding a way to diagnose disease at an early-stage is vitally important,” Pain Therapeutics President and CEO Remi Barbier said in an announcement. “A blood test may help detect Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms occur, or rule out other possible causes of memory problems, or might be used as a biomarker to measure the efficacy of drug candidates during clinical trials.”
The firm’s PTI-125 is an oral, small-molecule drug that was designed in-house, for which an NDA application to start clinical studies was cleared in July. A first-in-human clinical study with PTI-125 will be funded by a $1.7 million NIH grant, which was awarded in June. Results from the study are expected by the end
of 2017.For Fenrock, Pain Therapeutics developed a patch for administering around-the-clock fentanyl — an opioid that is 100 times stronger than morphine. But Pain Therapeutics says its patch “incorporates novel abuse-deterrent technology” to prevent someone from extracting the fentanyl. This candidate too, is working its way through clinical trial.
