Myrobalan Therapeutics Inc. has been awarded a grant of over $850,000 from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to support the preclinical and translational development of MRO-002, a G-protein-coupled receptor 17 (GPR17) antagonist, for the treatment of progressive multiple sclerosis (MS).

Pheno Therapeutics Ltd. has received clinical trial authorization (CTA) from the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for its lead candidate, PTD-802. The program will progress to a first-in-human phase I trial.

For many multiple sclerosis patients, the approval over the past 30 years of a lengthy list of immunomodulatory therapies has helped to reduce the frequency of relapses and to slow disease progression. However, there has been little parallel progress in the development of remyelination therapies, to tackle the other key pathophysiological dimension of the disease. Patients still have no therapies that can help to repair at least some of the damage that results from flare-ups, and the resulting neuronal loss contributes to further disease progression and disability. Rewind Therapeutics NV, of Leuven, Belgium, is one of a small clutch of firms attempting to tackle this problem.

Rewind Therapeutics NV has described 3-pyrrolylsulfonamide compounds acting as uracil nucleotide/cysteinyl leukotriene receptor (GPR17; P2Y-like) antagonists reported to be useful for diagnosis and treatment of neurodegeneration, leukodystrophies, optic neuropathy, Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, demyelinating, psychiatric and genetic disorders, among others.