Press Release Source: CombinatoRx, Incorporated
Wednesday November 12, 9:00 am ET
$450,000 To Fund Drug Discovery and Product Development Program
- Novel Mechanism Combination Pharmaceuticals to Treat Debilitating Muscle Wasting Disease with 100% Mortality Rate -
SOUTH EGREMONT, Mass. -- Charley’s Fund, Nash Avery Foundation and The Gavriel Meir Trust all non-profit organizations founded to support Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) research, today announced an extension to the existing collaborative agreement between CombinatoRx, Incorporated, Charley’s Fund and the Nash Avery Foundation to identify novel disease-modifying multi-targeted treatments for DMD, the most common form of muscular dystrophy.
“DMD is a progressive and fatal muscle-wasting disease and we are extremely excited to contribute to CombinatoRx and their unique approach to drug development," said Doron Rosenfeld, Founder of the Gavriel Meir Trust. “We hope that our contribution will enable CombinatoRx to speed up and further facilitate their program in order to identify combinations of drugs which will then soon be available for patients with DMD.”
"We are pleased to extend and continue our work in the area of DMD, these research funds will further leverage our combination High Throughput Screening (cHTS™) technology to discover novel multi-target therapeutics to address DMD, a disease with critically high unmet medical need,” commented Alexis Borisy, President and Chief Executive Officer of CombinatoRx. “This collaboration continues to build our R&D capability in the emerging degenerative disease space where there is significant opportunity to create important medicines.”
The new collaboration will focus on the use of the CombinatoRx cHTS™ drug discovery technology to identify disease-modifying multi-targeted DMD therapeutic candidates. CombinatoRx will be screening for synergistic activity in both DMD-relevant in vitro assays and assays that have broadly implicated mechanisms beyond DMD. Under this new agreement, CombinatoRx receives a further $450.000 in research funding, in addition to the $3,000.000 already pledged by Charley’s Fund and Nash Avery Foundation, owns new intellectual property generated during the collaboration and has full worldwide commercialization rights to all product candidates.
About Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
DMD is the most common fatal genetic disorder to affect children around the world. Children with DMD cannot produce dystrophin, a protein necessary for muscle strength and function. As a result, every skeletal muscle in the body deteriorates. There is no cure or effective treatment for DMD. Approximately one in 3,500 boys is born with DMD, and an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 children are afflicted in the United States alone.
About the Gavriel Meir Trust
The Gavriel Meir Trust is a not-for-profit foundation that is dedicated to financially support various avenues of research aimed at identification of a treatment and/or cure for children with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The Trust was founded in May of 2007 by Kerry and Doron Rosenfeld, whose son Gavriel was diagnosed with DMD in 2006 and is currently supporting a variety of promising research projects in Europe and now in the United States. For more information about the Gavriel Meir Trust, visit www.thegmtrust.org.
About Charley’s Fund
Charley’s Fund is a not-for-profit foundation that finances therapeutics development for Duchenne muscular dystrophy. The foundation’s mission is to expedite a treatment or cure in time to help this generation of children who suffer from DMD. Charley’s Fund targets translational research—research that moves science from the lab into human clinical trials. The 501(c)(3) public charity was co-founded in 2004 by Benjamin Seckler, M.D. and Tracy Kramer Seckler, whose 8-year-old son Charley has Duchenne muscular dystrophy. To learn more about Charley’s Fund, visit www.charleysfund.org.
About Nash Avery Foundation
The Nash Avery Foundation is a not-for-profit private foundation that is focused on financially supporting programs that will slow and eventually stop Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Nash Avery Foundation was founded by Angela and Tom Wicka after their son Nash was diagnosed with DMD. The Foundation believes that the solution in stopping this disease will come from a combination of well funded science and getting talented people focused on this disease.
About CombinatoRx
CombinatoRx, Incorporated (CRXX) is pioneering the new field of synergistic combination pharmaceuticals and has a broad product portfolio in phase 2 clinical development. Going beyond traditional combinations, CombinatoRx creates product candidates with novel mechanisms of action striking at the biological complexities of human disease. The lead programs in the CombinatoRx portfolio are advancing into later stage clinical trials. This portfolio is internally generated from the CombinatoRx proprietary drug discovery technology which provides a renewable and previously untapped source of novel drug candidates. The Company was founded in 2000 and is located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. To learn more about CombinatoRx please visit www.combinatorx.com.
Contact:
The Gavriel Meir Trust
Doron Rosenfeld, +44 7795 290 101
Founder & Trustee
info@thegmtrust.org
or
Charley’s Fund
Tracy Seckler, 413-528-5744
info@charleysfund.org
or
Nash Avery Foundation
Tom C. Wicka
President and Founder
tom.wicka@iwco.com
Source: CombinatoRx, Incorporated