reMYND receives grants from Flanders and Europe to advance break-through treatments in Epilepsy and Alzheimer’s

reMYND NV today announced that it has received two grants from Flanders and Europe to advance break-through treatments in Epilepsy and Alzheimer’s respectively. VLAIO, the Flemish agency for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, has provided a grant to assess therapeutics for epilepsy. H2020, the EU Research and Innovation program, has provided the PANA consortium a grant to develop theragnostic nanostructures for early Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

reMYND develops disease-modifying treatments for patients suffering from protein-misfolding disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Type 2 Diabetes and Huntington’s. Recently reMYND has broadened the scope of its pipeline by adding a new epilepsy drug discovery program.

With the financial support of VLAIO, reMYND can now accelerate its research on epilepsy treatments, characterise new mechanisms to halt neuronal hyperactivation and evaluate the potential application of the new drugs for epilepsy prevention and for treatment of refractory (drug-resistant) patients.

Commenting on the grant, Gerard Griffioen, CSO of reMYND, said: “This is an excellent example of how Flanders supports innovative research, which would not have happened without its support”

reMYND is also involved in the project to Promote active Ageing: functional Nanostructures for Alzheimer’s Disease at ultra-early stages (PANA), granted by the H2020 program of the EU. The PANA consortium, consisting of 11 partners, brings together expertise of neuroscientists, nanotechnologists, molecular imaging experts, clinicians and enterprises in an exclusive consortium. The key objectives of this program include the development of new effective early diagnostic and therapeutic strategies to help delaying the appearance of the most adverse symptoms of AD, by using nanotechnology.

About Alzheimer’s disease

AD is a progressive age-related neurodegenerative disorder with a prevalence of one in nine people with an age of 65 and older and is the 6th leading cause of death. Symptoms include loss of memory and other cognitive tasks which strongly disrupt daily life of patients and family members. Although some information as to the disease mechanism is known, the actual causes are unclear. Currently no treatments are available that stop or even slow down disease progression.

About Epilepsy

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder with a prevalence of about 1%. The underlying causes are heterogeneous, including both genetic and non-genetic risk factors which, by as yet poorly defined mechanisms, alter activity of neurons leading to increased incidence of seizures. Although symptomatic treatments are available, there is still a significant medical need as these treatments are only effective in certain patient subpopulations and may have significant side-effects.

About reMYND

reMYND NV, founded in 2002 as a spin-off from the University of Leuven, drives the development of disease-modifying treatments against Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Diabetes and other orphan protein misfolding disorders. reMYND is organised along two independently managed business units, the Contract Research Organization (CRO) and the own Drug Discovery & Development unit:

• reMYND’s own Drug Discovery & Development unit focuses entirely on disease-modifying treatments with the aim to decelerate – or even reverse – cellular degeneration found in protein misfolding disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), diabetes (T2D and T1D) and several orphan diseases. As such, reMYND responds to a clear unmet medical need, as all marketed treatments and the majority of the products under development world-wide are mainly aimed at mitigating symptoms.
  reMYND’s pipeline primarily consists of 2 disease-modifying programs counteracting tau-toxicity for AD, 2 programs for T2D, 1 counteracting synuclein-toxicity for PD, 1 for epilepsy and recent additions in orphan diseases.
• The in-vivo Contract Research Organization (CRO) helps its clients assess the pharmacokinetics and -dynamics of their experimental treatments against Alzheimer's disease in reMYND’s proprietary mouse models. Our mission is to be a strategic partner for our clients and help them identify the most promising set-up to assess potential effects. Given the extensive experience fully focused on Alzheimer's, reMYND’s CRO can contribute its expertise for every type of Alzheimer treatment in any form of application. The CRO is serving 6 of the Top 10 pharmaco’s worldwide and its client-base covers the US, Europe and Japan. The CRO has provided in-vivo proof-of-concept data for several candidate drugs that reMYND’s clients have currently in clinical development.

reMYND has been substantially supported by grants from VLAIO/ IWT (Flanders, Belgium) and from the Michael J Fox Foundation.

For more information please contact
Koen De Witte
Managing Director
koen.de.witte@remynd.com