World-First Partnership to Develop New Drugs for Parkinson’s

The University of Sheffield and Parkinson’s UK have launched a new £1 million virtual biotech company in the next stage^[1] of a pioneering research programme to create new drugs for Parkinson’s.

In a partnership that is the first of its kind, Keapstone Therapeutics is part of Parkinson’s UK’s new Virtual Biotech venture, formed to combat the lost opportunities in drug discovery and early clinical development caused by the changing pharma landscape. It will combine world-leading research from the University with funding and expertise from the charity to help develop revolutionary drugs for Parkinson’s, which affects around 127,000 people in the UK.

Keapstone is the first ‘single-asset’ spin-out company to be created in this way and it ensures that, if successful, the research is in the best possible position to receive investment – allowing immediate progress towards clinical trials.

Director of Research at Parkinson’s UK, Arthur Roach, said: “Due to the funding gap in early stage drug discovery, there are promising scientific breakthroughs for Parkinson’s happening every day that are not being picked up and developed by commercial companies.

“This major new programme of work will allow us to act in a similar way to a small biotech company. However, unlike a commercial company, our primary goal is the creation of new treatments to improve the lives of people with Parkinson’s, regardless of commercial considerations.

Keapstone Therapeutics will build on over a decade of research at the University’s Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), where researchers have pinpointed a way to trigger a possible in-built defence system that helps protect brain cells from oxidative stress. This stress is caused by a damaging build-up of free-radicals and is found in the brain cells of people with Parkinson’s.

Dr Richard Mead from SITraN discovered a new class of compounds that can activate the brain cell defence system. Keapstone Therapeutics will now fund the chemistry specialists, Sygnature Discovery, to further develop these molecules, which could eventually become new drugs that can slow or stop the progression of Parkinson’s.

^1] This next stage of research will further a project initiated by the University’s Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience (SITraN), in collaboration with drug discovery platform, European Lead Factory.