Neurotune receives EU funding for sarcopenia project

Neurotune AG, a Swiss biopharmaceutical company, today announced it is leading a consortium of research teams in the DISARCO project, a two-year project focused on developing an immunoassay for the diagnosis of sarcopenia. The consortium has received €720,000 from the European Eurostars Programme to fund the research.

Sarcopenia is a debilitating muscle disorder frequently affecting the elderly for which there is currently no cure.  It is defined as loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength that occurs with advancing age. The current diagnosis of the disease is a DXA scan, which is cumbersome and, as a descriptive method, does not provide further information on the underlying cause.  It is estimated that sarcopenia currently affects over 50 million people and is expected to increase to over 200 million in the next 40 years.

The project will be conducted in collaboration with three of Europe’s leading academic institutions the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland in Rapperswil; MicroCoat Biotechnologie (Germany); and the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany).

Dr. Jan Willem Vrijbloed, Chief Scientific Officer of Neurotune, Scientific coordinator of the project, commented. “This is a very important step in finding an effective treatment for sarcopenia. We are delighted to be working alongside teams of such high calibre and our combined experience will be invaluable as we work towards finding a better diagnosis of sarcopenia, opening the way to an improved treatment of this debilitating disease.”

The Eurostars Programme is the European funding and support programme specifically dedicated to stimulating international collaborative research and innovation projects of small and medium enterprises.

Neurotune (www.neurotune.com) develops small-molecules and biologicals into potential drugs to treat neurological disorders including neuro-muscular pathologies. Neurotune’s sarcopenia research program focuses on the synaptic serine protease neurotrypsin, a well defined proprietary novel drug target. Neurotrypsin plays a major role in the pathogenic mechanism of age-related muscle atrophy, i.e. sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is being recognized as an increasing cause of disability in the aging world population. Neurotune was incorporated in January 2005 and is based in Schlieren, Switzerland.

The University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland in Rapperswil (www.hsr.ch) is one of four campuses of the University of Applied Sciences of Eastern Switzerland. The Institute for Communication Systems (ICOM) belongs to the department of Electrical Engineering. The ICOM is focused on wireless communication, digital signal processing and control systems.

MicroCoat Biotechnologie (www.microcoat.de), founded in 1992, is active in the field of immune and nucleic acid diagnostics and has more than 20 years of experience in solid phase chemistry. The company offers services such as the development and validation of assays and diagnostic instruments, analytes screening and measurements of clinical and toxicological studies (Teragnostics). Research and development is focused on reagent and assay development, validation, protein chemistry (modification/conjugation), DNA-pre analytics and qualitative/quantitative analytics. 

The Department of Geriatric Medicine at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (www.uni-erlangen.org) consists of the Geriatric Clinic at the Klinikum Nuremberg and the Institute for Biomedicine of Aging. The latter brings together geriatricians, nutrition scientists, sports scientists and biochemists cooperating in various research projects that focus on functionality and nutrition in older persons. The Institute is involved in research projects concentrating on functionality and body composition in older individuals and sarcopenia has become a major focus. Besides intervention studies with different training modes and nutritional supplementation, studies on the molecular basis of functional decline have been realized.