NeuroVive Pharmaceutical AB(Nasdaq Stockholm: NVP, OTCQX: NEVPF) announced today that the company has been awarded SEK 1.5 million as a first tranche of total SEK 5 million in funding from Vinnova, Sweden’s innovation agency, and the Swelife call, for intensified development in the NVP015 project, the goal of which is to advance the candidate compound NV354 to clinical studies.
The development program that Vinnova is supporting involves formal preclinical development, including toxicology studies and process development for large-scale manufacture of NV354. The funding received by NeuroVive is from Vinnova’s Swelife call for applications for Projects for better health, Step 2 (2018) , which is a continuation of the Step 1 funding of SEK 1 million that the company received in 2017. The Step 1 funding, facilitated the selection of the candidate compound NV354 as part of the NVP015 spearhead project, with the aim of developing a new pharmacological therapy for patients with mitochondrial disorders caused by complex I dysfunctions such as Leigh syndrome, a disorder with a significant unmet medical need.
“The goal of the NV354 development program is to markedly improve life for those patients, normally children, suffering from these types of mitochondrial disorders. This funding is of the greatest importance for effectively advancing the project and represents a mark of quality for our program,” says Eskil Elmér, Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President Discovery of NeuroVive.
“We are naturally incredibly pleased to receive this funding from Vinnova. It underscores the potential that NV354 has to make a difference for mitochondrial disorders, which has also been affirmed by the fact that our partner in the US, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, received a three-year research grant of USD 4 million earlier this year for research supporting the program, and by our out-licensing of other compounds from the NVP015 project, focusing on the eye disorder LHON, to the US company BridgeBio,” said Erik Kinnman, CEO of NeuroVive.
Earlier this year, NeuroVive reported the first preclinical efficacy outcomes for NV354, and in addition has seen further convincing efficacy data in several different established experimental models of mitochondrial disorders. Apart from NeuroVive’s own research, independent studies are underway among the company’s renowned academic partners in mitochondrial medicinal research, such as the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, in order to obtain additional valuable data prior to the clinical development of NV354.
