The National Institute on Aging (NIA) has awarded Cayman Chemical with a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to further their assay platform and novel antibodies. The grant award will also support the treatment and early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and other tauopathies.
Tauopathies are neurodegenerative disorders that present tau protein in the central nervous system. “Animal and cell studies demonstrated that soluble, oligomeric p-tau are toxic to the cells and can be transmitted between cells in a prion-like fashion,” commented Dr. Inés Morano, Senior Director of Discovery R&D at Cayman. “We seek to facilitate the development of tauopathy treatment and prevention by developing assay kits that support the identification of therapeutics and risk factors of tauopathies.”
Cayman scientists are working with Kuo laboratory-developed kinetic assays of p-tau aggregation and cell-based assays of p-tau cytotoxicity. “The grant will support the commercial development of the assays and also fund the production of antibodies recognizing the pathogenic epitope of p-tau,” said Stephen Barrett, Vice President of R&D and Production at Cayman. The grant is also sub awarded to Dr. Kuo’s lab at Michigan State University.