Oxford University spin-out wins grant from French charity

Research grant

VASTox plc has won a grant from the Association Française contre les Myopathies (AFM), a neuromuscular disease charity, to support to the company’s spinal muscular atrophy drug discovery programme.

VASTox has developed an in vivo screen that models spinal muscular atrophy in fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster) larvae. It is using the screen to identify small molecule hits from its proprietary compound library. The money from AFM will allow the company to accelerate preclinical screening and candidate identification

Spinal Muscular Atrophy, an inherited disease that affects 50,000 people in the developed world, causes loss of motor neurons in the spinal cord, causing muscle to atrophy. In its severest form life expectancy is often less than two years.

AFM is one of the largest charities in the world focusing on neuromuscular diseases, and has raised over €1.2 billion since 1987, mostly for R&D into the causes of and treatments for these diseases.

VASTox’s most advanced drug programme is developing a treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy based on the up-regulation of production of the muscle protein utrophin. The company has four additional programmes in osteoarthritis, cancer, tuberculosis and stem cell therapies.

These are based on VASTox’s chemical genomics technology platform. This uses transgenic zebrafish and fruitflies as the basis of in vivo screening that can predict the efficacy and toxicity of potential drug compounds in humans.