NEW YORK – The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) has awarded Ventus Therapeutics a $150,000 grant to support development of a protein-targeted positron emission tomography (PET) tracer, the biopharmaceutical company announced Thursday.
Waltham, Massachusetts-based Ventus, a firm developing small molecule therapeutics in immunology, inflammation, and neurology, will use the grant to develop a PET tracer for NLRP3, or NOD-like receptor protein 3, which is involved in triggering the immune system and inflammatory responses in various neurological disorders, including Parkinson's disease.
A validated PET tracer can be used to study NLRP3's role in driving neuroinflammation and build on the company's portfolio of brain-penetrant NLRP3 inhibitors, which are currently in development.
"NLRP3 is one of our initial targets of focus, and as part of our differentiated portfolio, we have developed structurally distinct, potent, and selective brain-penetrant NLRP3 inhibitors," Ventus CSO Mike Crackower said in a statement. "We now have the potential to develop the first ever brain-penetrant NLRP3 PET tracer, and we are grateful for the support of MJFF.”
The grant comes from MJFF's Novel PET Tracer Development Program, a program the foundation launched last year to support efforts to develop and validate PET imaging techniques using radiotracers for targets related to Parkinson's disease. These PET tracers could one day be used as a tool to identify surrogate biomarkers for assessing disease risk, monitoring disease progression, and determining therapeutic efficacy.