EnVivo Pharmaceuticals Awarded NIH Grant to Develop Technology for CNS Drug Discovery

EnVivo Awarded NIH Grant to Develop Technology for CNS Drug Discovery
Redwood City, California – October 1, 2002 – EnVivo Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced that it has been awarded a grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The grant supports the development of in vivo screening technologies for the discovery of novel therapies for neurodegenerative diseases.

This Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant entitled “A new method of CNS Drug Discovery," will enable EnVivo to build upon its existing capabilities in the identification of promising lead compounds that have low toxicity and true therapeutic relevance. Phase I provides $100,000 plus indirect costs for the first year. The successful completion of Phase I milestones triggers the Phase II award which is in excess of $700,000.

"We are not only pleased to receive this funding, but also appreciate the support, in the eyes of our scientific colleagues, that the award represents," said Chris Cummings, Ph.D., at EnVivo. "We believe these technologies will accelerate the discovery of new therapies for patients suffering from neurodegenerative disease."

About SBIR Grants. The NIH awards SBIR grants to small businesses using a competitive application process. These awards provide companies like EnVivo an incentive to undertake cutting-edge, high risk, high quality scientific research projects that may lead to important advances in patient care.

About EnVivo Pharmaceuticals. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, EnVivo Pharmaceuticals is a privately held biopharmaceutical company dedicated to discovering and developing therapeutics for disorders of the brain. EnVivo has created a new paradigm in drug discovery by using massive in vivo screening of disease models in simple organisms. Its technology greatly improves and accelerates the drug discovery process because it specifically assays for changes in clinically relevant symptoms, such as the organism’s motor function. Because the screen detects improvements in disease symptoms, it does not depend on prior understanding of the disease mechanism. EnVivo’s technology is particularly suitable for the CNS as it screens for drugs that can act at multiple cellular and molecular sites within the complex neural circuits that regulate behavior. For more information, please visit www.envivopharma.com.

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