NeuroVive Pharmaceutical AB has announced that the company has signed a collaboration agreement with Kevin K.W. Wang, Ph.D., of the University of Florida to conduct biomarker research for NeuroVive’s traumatic brain injury (TBI) programme. The research is aimed at developing alternative endpoints for the company’s clinical TBI programme by analysing patient samples from the previously completed CHIC study.

The research will evaluate the use of biofluid-based biomarkers in TBI drug development, which is increasingly recognized as being of utmost importance for diagnosis, prognosis and therapy evaluation. The research will be conducted at a laboratory at the University of Florida’s McKnight Brain Institute focused on neurotrauma, neuroproteomics and biomarkers research headed by Wang.

“The collaboration with Dr. Wang and his research team at the University of Florida will greatly aid us in the continued development of our TBI candidate drug NeuroSTAT. NeuroSTAT has displayed promising results in our recent experimental study at the University of Pennsylvania and in the clinical CHIC study. The results from this biomarker analysis will be very useful in further optimizing our upcoming phase II efficacy study,” said Magnus Hansson, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer, NeuroVive.

Wang is an expert in biomarker research for TBI and part of several multicenter collaborative efforts to improve knowledge and clinical trial design in TBI, including the US-based efforts TRACK-TBI (Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in Traumatic Brain Injury) and TED (TBI Endpoints Development), as well as the European CENTER-TBI initiative.

“We have a team of very talented biomarker researchers here at our research laboratory at University of Florida who investigate TBI-related biomarkers that can serve to improve diagnosis, strengthen short- and long-term patient care, and assist clinical trials for new therapy development, which is the goal of our collaboration with NeuroVive”, said Wang, who is also an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, Psychiatry, Neuroscience in the UF College of Medicine and a member of the McKnight Brain Institute.