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Tech Valley News
AMRI Pursues Drugs for Huntington's Disease
AMRI and CHDI Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization pursuing drugs that delay or slow Huntington’s disease, announced today the commencement of a new collaboration agreement focused on the discovery of new therapeutic agents for the treatment of this disease.
Under this agreement, AMRI will test samples from its compound collection against several JNK kinases. These kinases may be implicated in the progression of HD. AMRI will use its expertise in computer-aided drug discovery, biological assay development and high throughput screening for this project.
“AMRI is pleased to have this opportunity to partner with CHDI in its efforts to mitigate the effects of Huntington’s disease. We look forward to leveraging our expertise in a broad spectrum of drug discovery services to develop potential treatments for this debilitating condition,” said Bruce Sargent, Ph.D., vice president, discovery research & development at AMRI. “Based on the potential success of this first phase, AMRI has the ability to provide lead optimization services including medicinal chemistry and in vitro metabolism, making for a fully integrated drug discovery project in terms of time, quality and efficient use of resources.”
“Collaborating strategically with companies like AMRI helps us manage our scientific activities more efficiently,” said Ignacio Muñoz-Sanjuan, vice president of biology at CHDI. “Access to AMRI’s compound library and lead optimization services may allow us to move confidently from biological research into translational and pre-clinical programs.”
Huntington’s disease is a familial disease caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene. Each child of a person with a mutation in the huntingtin gene has a 50-50 chance of inheriting the mutation. As a result of carrying the mutation, an individual’s brain cells fail and die leading to cognitive and physical impairments that, over the course of the disease, significantly impair the individual’s quality of life and ultimately causes death. Symptoms of Huntington’s disease, which generally develop in midlife and become progressively more debilitating, can also develop in infancy or old age. Once overt symptoms start, patients live for about 15 to 20 years. One person in 10,000 is believed to carry a mutation in the huntingtin gene. There is currently no way to delay the onset of symptoms or slow the progression of Huntington’s disease.
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