Neurotrope announced today that it has signed an agreement with Stanford University to study and, along with Paul Wender, investigate certain analogs of bryostatin, referred to as “bryologs”, as potential clinical candidates for the treatment of various neurological disorders.
This collaboration is framed by a license agreement forged between Stanford University and Neurotrope, which provides the company with exclusive rights to make, use or sell certain bryologs for commercial application in therapeutic applications for central nervous system disorders, lysosomal storage diseases, stroke, cardioprotection and traumatic brain injury.
Bryostatin is Neurotrope’s phase II clinical candidate currently being investigated for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Bryostatin potently activates the enzyme PKCepsilon (PKCe), and in preclinical in vivo models this effect has been shown to play a role in slowing or reversing several neurodegenerative disease processes, according to a press release.
Bryostatin is a natural product produced by a marine microorganism called Bugula neritina and is isolated from biomass harvested from the ocean. Several total syntheses of this complex product have been achieved in recent years in various academic chemistry laboratories, and these approaches represent an alternative source of this drug.
Wender’s laboratory reports that it has synthesised a large family of bryologs over a number of years as part of a research programme to define the essential pharmacophore (molecular features) critical to bryostatin’s potent biological activity. The bryologs are easier to produce than bryostatin due to their less complex chemical structures. They represent a rich collection of potential drug candidates, some of which are expected to be advanced to clinical trials by Neurotrope for the treatment of several neurodegenerative diseases such as ischaemic stroke, Fragile X syndrome, traumatic brain injury and Alzheimer’s disease.
