NeuroVive Pharmaceutical AB, the mitochondrial medicine company, announced that its research collaboration partner the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has received a two-year grant, #1R21NS103826-01f in total of 473,000 USD from the US NIH (National Institutes of Health) programme Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats (CounterACT). The grant will broaden preclinical research with compounds from NeuroVive’s NVP015 program.

NeuroVive and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) has an ongoing research collaboration around NeuroVive’s cutting edge research program, NVP015, primarily aimed at developing a new pharmacological treatment for patients with genetic mitochondrial diseases, an area of high unmet medical need.

Researchers at CHOP, under the lead of Dr. Todd Kilbaugh, Associate Professor of Anesthesiology, Critical Care, and Pediatrics, have received the grant to study NVP015 in a new area - the ability to support mitochondrial function recovery and prevention of organ failure following the immediate exposure of toxic chemicals. The mission of the CounterACT program is to support research and development of therapeutics that can mitigate the health effects of toxic chemicals, including traditional chemical warfare agents, toxic industrial chemicals and pesticides.

“The compounds in the NVP015 program act by bypassing mitochondrial complex, which is often affected in the case of chemical toxicity, making the NVP015 programme an ideal candidate to explore as a pharmacological treatment option for this indication”, commented Dr. Todd Kilbaugh.

"The grant is an indication of the scientific interest this novel treatment strategy has generated, not only in the core focus area of genetic mitochondrial diseases. Thanks to the research grant, the scientific community will gain new exciting knowledge of the potential beneficial effects of the NVP015 compounds and hopefully develop them towards novel treatments against toxic effects of a wide range of chemical agents”, said Eskil Elmér, chief scientific officer at NeuroVive.