A five-year, $15.6 million award was recently announced for supporting continued research into mucolytic agents developed by Parion Sciences and to enable Investigational New Drug (IND) applications for these molecules. The funding is being provided by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and will be delivered into The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC-CH) and The University of Colorado, Denver (UCD). These grants will support their Pulmonary Research Programs.
Parion Sciences is a company dedicated to the development of new treatments for pulmonary and ocular diseases. It is focused on research, development and commercialization of treatments that could improve and extend the lives of those with innate mucosal surface deficiencies of the airway or eye. The company is currently working on a wide variety of pre-clinical and clinical candidates in several mechanisms of action and approaches.
With this new NIH funding, Parion’s drugs will be tested in the pursuit of new answers to these pulmonary diseases. The first year of funding will be awarded to the Centers for Advanced Diagnostics and Experimental Therapeutics in Lung Disease (CADET), totaling $7.7 million dollars. This grant includes $1.46 million for UNC-CH to conduct clinical research based on Parion’s mucolytic program in the field of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Cystic Fibrosis (CF). The second CADET grant totals $7.9 million and will be awarded to UCD, with $1.52 million in the first year to support the pre-clinical research on Parion’s mucolytic program in Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). The two CADET grants will be funding 5 years of research with a renewal contract after 2 years and annual reviews.
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“As a science driven company, it is gratifying to partner with such premier academic institutions like UNC and UCD to successfully secure the competitive NIH Awards,” said Paul Boucher, President of Parion Sciences, in a press release. “The NIH support and the combined expertise of the collaborations boost our innovative mucolytic program as we advance through the pre-clinical stages.”
Parion Sciences is developing and testing novel mucolytic agents that are specially designed for targeting the mucus structure and facilitating mucus removal from the lungs, since clearing adherent secretions from the lungs of patients with acute and chronic pulmonary disorders is a priority and an unmet need in healthcare. If they become FDA-approved, the agents will become drugs that might exponentially improve the lives of millions that suffer from COPD, CF, and IPF.