Geneuro Receives CHF 6.7 Million (EUR 6.4 Million) in Funding From the Swiss Government for the Development of Temelimab Against Long-COVID
13 Décembre 2021 - 8:16AM
Business Wire
- Selection of GeNeuro's project within the framework of the
Swiss “Federal Funding Programme for COVID-19 Medicines” to fund
clinical research into drugs for COVID-19
- Government funding of CHF 6.7 million to support a Phase 2
clinical trial with temelimab in patients suffering from Long-
COVID with neurological and psychiatric symptoms
Regulatory News:
GeNeuro (Euronext Paris: CH0308403085 - GNRO) (Paris:GNRO), a
biopharmaceutical company developing novel treatments for
neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases, with final Phase II
results in multiple sclerosis expected in March 2022, announced
today that its development in Long-COVID is one of the four
projects selected by the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health
(FOPH) and that it will receive in this regard a grant of 6.7
million Swiss francs (€6.4 million) to co-fund a Phase 2 clinical
trial to treat patients with long-standing COVID who exhibit severe
neurological and psychiatric ("neuropsychiatric") symptoms.
"We are extremely grateful for this funding from the FOPH, which
will allow us to test GeNeuro's treatment for the neuropsychiatric
forms of Long-COVID," said Jesús Martin-Garcia, CEO of
GeNeuro. "The efforts conducted with our academic partners have
shown the presence of the pathogenic protein HERV-W ENV ("W-ENV")
in Long-COVID patients and could explain the neuropsychiatric
syndromes that affect them. Our approach is one of the first
concrete leads to explain these problems, and also potentially to
treat them with temelimab, GeNeuro's anti-W-ENV antibody."
Large-scale academic studies indicate that more than 10% of
people infected with SARS-CoV-2 do not fully recover and/or develop
new symptoms, with a high proportion of neurological and/or
psychiatric disorders. With more than 265 million confirmed cases
of COVID-19 worldwide, including more than 100 million in the US
and Europe, this problem is now recognized as a major public health
emergency, as it is affecting millions of people.
A first publication in the Lancet EBioMedicine in April 2021
showed the systematic presence of the pathogenic protein W-ENV in
hospitalized COVID-19 patients and its association with disease
severity. Since then, GeNeuro has been involved in numerous
academic efforts to understand the role of this
W-ENV protein, which is known to have a pro-inflammatory effect
and pathogenicity on nervous system cells, in the syndromes
suffered by COVID-19 patients, months after the infectious phase
has ended.
Today, GeNeuro is able to test the presence of W-ENV in the
blood of patients suffering from Long-COVID, and is developing
temelimab, a specific anti-W-ENV antibody, already being tested
against neurodegeneration in multiple sclerosis. The clinical trial
supported by the FOPH will be a double-blind, randomized,
placebo-controlled clinical study on Long-COVID patients with
severe neuropsychiatric symptoms that prevent them from continuing
their daily and professional activities. This study will start in
the spring of next year.
About W-ENV and COVID-19
It has been shown that SARS-CoV-2 triggers the expression of
W-ENV in the white blood cells of approximately 20% of healthy
donors, suggesting a genetic and/or epigenetic susceptibility to
the production of this pathogenic protein upon exposure to the
virus.
W-ENV expression was detected in lymphocytes from hospitalized
COVID-19 patients, not in healthy subjects, and the level of W-ENV
correlated with the severity of disease progression.
Post-mortem studies of COVID-19 patients have now shown that
W-ENV expression can be triggered in the brain, particularly on
microglial cells as well as in endothelial cells of brain blood
vessels. Until now, W-ENV expression in the brain had only been
observed in patients who had died from diseases such as multiple
sclerosis, suggesting a role in fueling long-term
neurodegeneration. W-ENV is not found in the brains of neurological
controls such as patients with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's
disease.
Analyses of samples from the first pilot cohorts of patients
with post-COVID depressive and cognitive symptoms have shown that
W-ENV protein is present at consistently detectable and sometimes
elevated levels in the blood. This may allow early identification
and treatment of patients who could benefit from anti-W-ENV therapy
with temelimab.
About GeNeuro
GeNeuro's mission is to develop safe and effective treatments
for neurological disorders and autoimmune diseases, such as
multiple sclerosis, by neutralizing causative factors induced by
human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), which represent 8% of the
human genome.
Based in Geneva, Switzerland, and with an R&D center in
Lyon, France, GeNeuro holds the rights to 17 patent families that
protect its technology.
For more information, please visit: www.geneuro.com
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law.
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GeNeuro Jesús Martin-Garcia Chairman and CEO +41 22 552
4800 investors@geneuro.com
NewCap (France) Louis-Victor Delouvrier / Mathilde Bohin
(investors) +33 1 44 71 98 52 Arthur Rouillé (media) +33 1 44 71 94
98 geneuro@newcap.eu
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