BioWorld International Correspondent

PARIS - Trophos SA has been awarded a grant of €921,054 (US$1.4 million) by the French National Research Agency to evaluate the potential of its drug candidate TRO40303 to arrest or prevent the cellular damage that occurs in preclinical models of both cardiac and cerebral ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI).

The two-year project, known as IRIstop, is to be conducted by Marseille, France-based Trophos in conjunction with the research teams of Alain Berdeaux, of the Mondor Institute of Biomedical Research of the University of Créteil, near Paris, and Michel Plotkine, with the Pharmaceutical and Biological Sciences in Paris.

Trophos specializes in the discovery and development of drugs for neurological disorders and TRO40303 is one of the novel compounds it identified using its proprietary neuronal cell screening platform.

Preclinical studies have demonstrated that those compounds promote the function and survival of neurons, cardiomyocytes and hepatocytes under various disease-relevant stress conditions, via a mitochondria-based mechanism of action.

Trophos pointed out that initial data from preclinical studies using in vivo models of cardiac IRI were sufficiently promising to justify the further development of TRO40303. While participating in the IRIstop project, the company is to complete regulatory preclinical studies of the product with a view to initiating a Phase I clinical trial in 2009.

"This would be the second Trophos product to enter the clinic with a mitochondria-based mechanism of action that is predicted to exhibit a therapeutic benefit in diseases such as neuropathic pain, ischemia-reperfusion injury and hepatotoxicity," noted Antoine Béret, Trophos' CEO.

"TRO19622, our lead product, is currently enrolling patients for a Phase IIa trial in painful diabetic neuropathy and a Phase Ib study in spinal muscular atrophy," he added.