Development grant
Noxxon Pharma AG has been awarded a €1.2 million research grant from Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the ministry’s small and medium enterprise innovation initiative, KMU-Innovativ.
The money will pay for the Phase I clinical development of its candidate Spiegelmer NOX-A12, for use in autologous haematopoietic stem cell transplantation in patients suffering from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or multiple myeloma.
Noxxon’s Chief Executive Officer, Frank Morich, said, “In awarding this competitive research grant to Noxxon, the BMBF acknowledges our tremendous progress in maturing spiegelmer compounds into therapeutic candidates for human use.”
Spiegelmers (L-aptamers) are chemical entities based on synthetic mirror-image oligonucleotides (Spiegel is the German word for mirror). As a result of their mirror image configuration spiegelmers are not metabolised and do not hybridise with native nucleic acids. In addition, spiegelmers do not activate the innate immune response via Toll-like receptors, and have shown a favourable immunogenicity profile in preclinical testing. These entities bind their targets in a conceptually similar manner to monoclonal antibodies. They are highly selective for their pharmacological target and potent inhibitors of target function.
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