Michael J. Fox Foundation Awards One Million Dollars for Development of 'Trojan Horse' Delivery Technology to Treat Parkinson's Disease

from: MarketWatch
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...1%7D&dist=hppr

Last update: 4:27 p.m. EDT Aug. 15, 2008

NEW YORK, Aug 15, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- As part of its mission to drive transformative treatments and a cure for Parkinson's disease, The Michael J. Fox Foundation today announced that it would award Santa Monica-based biotech ArmaGen Technologies, Inc., up to $1 million if all milestones are met to take practical steps toward developing a "Trojan horse" delivery technology for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. .........

-- Building on earlier work funded by MJFF under its Community Fast Track initiative, the ArmaGen team, led by principal investigator Ruben J. Boado, PhD, will work with the trophic factor GDNF. They will try to enable it to cross the blood-brain barrier by re-engineering it using Trojan horse technology. The end goal is to create a safe and effective treatment in which GDNF, fused to a genetically engineered antibody that is naturally capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, can be injected intravenously into the blood. The antibody, "hiding" the GDNF inside itself -- as the Trojan horse of Homer's Iliad hid Greek soldiers, allowing them to enter Troy -- would then ferry the attached GDNF across the blood-brain barrier, from the blood to the target site in brain. --

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paula