Galenea Awarded $3 Million NIH Grant to Develop Translational EEG Biomarkers for Schizophrenia

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Researchers at Galenea Corp., and collaborator Kevin Spencer of the VA Boston Healthcare System and Harvard Medical School, have been awarded a 5-year, $3M grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). The grant will fund the development of new biomarkers based on brain wave oscillations in animal models of psychosis and in human schizophrenia patients. The program will incorporate Galenea’s sophisticated in vivo electroencephalography (EEG) technology alongside Dr. Spencer’s innovations in clinical EEG measures.

“This program is a highly coordinated effort in which research in my lab is being guided by the EEG findings at Galenea, and in turn directing Galenea scientists on where to look for effects”

“It has become increasingly apparent that the rodent behavioral models used in industry to discover drug candidates for neuropsychiatric disorders are very poor predictors of a drug’s efficacy in humans” stated Mark Benjamin, Galenea’s President & CEO. “The deficiencies of these models are partially responsible for the dearth of novel drugs for neuropsychiatry, and the field desperately needs models which will more accurately predict human clinical outcome.” “A key challenge in creating effective animal models is the profound gap between rodent and human behavioral responses. But evidence suggests that underlying brain network activity is far better conserved than behavior between species, particularly in response to specific cognitive tasks” added David Gerber, Galenea’s VP of CNS Research. “The key to predictive measures may be in monitoring network activity, and we are thrilled that the NIMH is supporting our approach.”

By examining EEG patterns in normal rodents and in rodent models of human psychosis and monitoring how these specific EEG patterns change in response to well characterized cognitive and sensory challenges, Galenea is developing new EEG-based markers that will serve as more objective measures of disease and drug effects. In parallel, Dr. Spencer’s lab is focusing on identifying similar EEG changes in healthy human volunteers and schizophrenia patients. The collaborative research program has been carefully designed to employ related cognitive and sensory challenges in rodents and human subjects to maximize the chance of developing translational measures.

“This program is a highly coordinated effort in which research in my lab is being guided by the EEG findings at Galenea, and in turn directing Galenea scientists on where to look for effects” said Kevin Spencer, Research Health Scientist at the VA Boston Healthcare System and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “As far as I am aware, this is the only industry-academia collaboration using this closely linked, iterative approach, and NIMH believed that this has a significant probability of success. We have already uncovered some exciting EEG patterns that appear to be conserved between species and are impacted in the same way in human patients and rodent models”.

The program’s goal is to develop a new portfolio of predictive EEG-based biomarkers that can be used for preclinical drug candidate testing in rodents and also to guide human clinical trials of new therapeutics for neuropsychiatric disorders. The availability of these measures is expected to improve the probability of success for new CNS drugs.

About Galenea

Galenea is a leader in the rapidly emerging field of synaptic transmission drug discovery. Synaptic transmission is the process by which neurons communicate with each other, and dysfunctions in this process are now known to play a central role in many psychiatric and neurological diseases. Modulators of synaptic transmission therefore have the potential to yield breakthrough treatments. Galenea has developed an innovative synaptic transmission drug discovery platform that integrates three components: the MANTRA™ system, a proprietary, high throughput screening technology, to identify a new generation of small molecule modulators of synaptic transmission; preclinical network measures employing in vitro brain slice EEG assays, and in vivo models using integrated EEG measures of animal behavior to more reliably determine CNS drug efficacy; and human EEG biomarkers, developed in tandem with and informed by our animal EEG data to greatly enhance CNS drug development. The company is advancing a novel pro-cognitive program derived from the platform and the approach can be extended to address multiple CNS disorders. Galenea has also assembled a compelling scientific team, balancing academic aptitude with industry experience and entrepreneurship. For more information about Galenea, please visit the company’s website at www.galenea.com.