(Sharecast News) - Redx Pharma announced on Tuesday that Innovate UK has awarded biomedical catalyst funding to Redx and Medicines Discovery Catapult (MCD).
The AIM-traded company said the grant would fund the development and validation of a panel of translational biomarkers to assess novel therapeutics in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), which it described as a life-threatening fibrotic lung condition.
It said the collaboration combined its expertise in the development of novel small molecule precision medicines, including its 'Porcupine' (RXC006) and 'Rho-associated protein kinase 2' (ROCK2) inhibitors, together with MDC's expertise in biomarker strategies.
The collaboration was expected to enable the progression of anti-fibrotic therapies in an area of high unmet medical need worldwide.
Development of new therapies for the treatment of fibrotic diseases was currently hampered by the lack of translation between animal models and human disease, Redx explained.
In addition, robust biomarker strategies that could be used to stratify patients, predict treatment efficacy and show a meaningful anti-fibrotic response early in clinical development did not exist at present.
Thus, new biomarkers validated and developed through the project were expected to "greatly assist" the development of new therapies for IPF, and improve the likelihood of clinical success.
The company said the project, funded by Innovate UK, aimed to set up and validate a "comprehensive group" of fibrotic disease-associated genes and proteins with the potential to further develop into a sensitive biomarker panel for clinical use.
A multimodal approach would be undertaken by MDC to investigate novel biomarker signatures to characterise disease and treatment response.
Those biomarkers could be used to evaluate Redx's Porcupine (RXC006) and ROCK2 small molecule inhibitors in preclinical fibrosis models, and ultimately support future clinical development strategies for those programmes, which aimed to enter the clinic by 2021.
The total grant awarded to fund this project was £0.516m.
"We are excited to enter into this unique collaboration with Medicines Discovery Catapult and would like to thank Innovate UK for the validation of our teams' scientific capabilities with the biomedical catalyst funding award," said Redx chief scientific officer Dr Richard Armer.
"This will accelerate preclinical assessment and ensure a robust clinical development plan is in place for our Porcupine and ROCK2 inhibitors for fibrosis."
Dr Peter Simpson, chief scientific officer at Medicines Discovery Catapult, added that the partnership with Redx would allow the development of a robust portfolio of biomarkers for IPF, and the progression of anti-fibrotic therapies in a faster and better-informed way.
"This exciting collaboration will enable us to better address an important and unmet clinical need."
At 0844 GMT, shares in Redx Pharma were up 5.71% at 7.4p.
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