FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, Feburary 25, 2004
CONTACT:
Floyd E. Bloom, M.D.
Founding Chief Executive Officer
(858) 677-0466
Neurome Receives Phase I SBIR Grant
from the National Institutes of Health to Develop Novel Screening
Platform to Assess Efficacy of Antidepressants
Results of behavioral assays in mouse
models of depression will be correlated with 3-dimensional
volumetric analysis of gene expression within the brains of
these animals.
SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA, February 25, 2004 -- Neurome, Inc.
announced today that it has received a Phase I grant from
the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) Small Business Innovation
Research (SBIR) Program to develop better predictive test
systems along with specific biological markers for drug target
expression patterns that will enable pharmaceutical companies
to screen new chemical entities (NCEs) to obtain corresponding
behavioral readouts and their neurobiological, gene- or protein-
expression signatures.
According to Dr. Floyd E. Bloom, M.D., Neurome’s Founding
Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board, "This
grant will allow us to undertake a novel approach to the development
of new antidepressant medications, employing the inter-strain
variations as a key to the underlying biological basis for
vulnerability and therapeutic responsiveness.”
Current behavioral tests and animal models of depression
lack the necessary validations required to serve as robust
and reliable in vivo screens for new chemical entities to
treat depression. Phase I of this grant will demonstrate the
feasibility of high-throughput gene expression mapping for
identification of relevant markers that underlie differences
in baseline performance in antidepressant behavioral tests.
A small battery of tests, widely used by pharmaceutical companies
and known to be predictive of antidepressant activity, will
be employed to obtain behavioral endpoint measures that may
then be used to correlate with the expression of depression-specific
molecular markers. A high-throughput system for acquisition,
analysis and 3D display of quantitative data related to depression
will provide a platform for preclinical drug development,
with broad utility for comprehensive analysis of differential
gene expression patterns in the mouse brain.
Neurome will partner with PsychoGenics, Inc. (Hawthorne,
New York) in the development of these screening platforms.
Follow-on collaborations with pharmaceutical partners will
take advantage of these products and tools in the discovery
and development of new compounds to treat depression. “Demand
for the Neurome Technologies has enabled us to establish partnerships
with a number of large pharmaceutical companies", said
Warren G. Young, Ph.D., Neurome’s President and Chief
Technology Officer. "The growing trend among pharmaceutical
companies to out-source key aspects of research and development
provides unlimited opportunity for Neurome's proprietary technologies,
designed to facilitate and optimize CNS drug discovery.”
Depression is a persistent and debilitating disorder that
typically presents in discrete episodes that recur during
a person’s lifetime. A high degree of variation exists
among individuals with depression, in terms of symptoms and
response to treatment, indicating that depression may have
several complex and interacting causes. Depression is a serious
medical condition, with attendant high economic costs. In
any given year, depression affects approximately 19 million
adults in the United States and is considered the leading
cause of disability in the U.S. and worldwide.
About Neurome
Neurome, Inc., develops standardized, quantitative databases
that accurately depict and integrate gene expression patterns
in the three-dimensional context of the brain’s structures,
circuits, and cells, and deploys these databases in primary
research directed toward the discovery and development of
gene targets for enhancement of brain function and treatment
of brain-based disease. Neurome performs contract brain research
for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies while at the
same time pursuing its own in-house and collaborative research
protocols. The data collected from these efforts will populate
an evolving, comprehensive database available by subscription
and useful on a broad level for analyses of mouse models of
brain function and disease. In this regard, the application
of the Neurome technologies will provide rigorous, quantitative
data that are optimally suited to the measurement of subtle
cell-type specific shifts in gene expression, as well as progression
and prevention of degenerative events affecting specific cell
classes and brain regions. For more information, please visit
Neurome’s website at www.neurome.com.
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