DTx received a notice of award in September for our first CNS focused grant, targeting the Tau gene/protein implicated in FTLD’s such as PSP as well as Alzheimer’s disease. This grant from the National Institute of Aging provides $225K in support to DTx and our collaborator Dr. Gerald Schellenberg at University of Pennsylvania. “Because there are no approved disease modifying drugs for treatment of neurodegenerative disease, the NIH rightly recognizes that new technologies, including novel drug delivery approaches, are a high priority. There are a wealth of well-validated targets (such as Tau) that should be addressable through gene silencing approaches such as siRNA or ASO—but delivery remains a significant problem. This new funding (as well as other pending grants) provides an opportunity to advance DTx’s technology and optimize oligo delivery for CNS therapeutics. We’re very excited to work on this difficult problem” said Jeff Friedman, MD/Ph.D., COO of DTx Pharma.
DTx currently has two additional active SBIR grants from NCATS totaling $630k. We continue to actively seek nondilutive funding with several other grants either submitted or in preparation covering a variety of therapeutic and technology development ideas from both government and foundation sources.