Massachusetts’ PixarBio Hiring at New Jersey Site to Respond to Opioid Crisis
May 12, 2016
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based PixarBio announced today that it is adding 5,000 square feet of office space to its facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey. The new space will house 10 staff currently employed by the company, and an additional 40 workers who will be hired in the future.
PixarBio focuses on developing targeted delivery systems for drugs, cells or biologics to treat pain, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and spinal cord injury. On March 18, the company announced it had filed for orphan drug status for its NeuroRelease SCI (NR-SCI), a drug candidate to treat spinal cord injury (SCI), with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
NR-SCI is an injectable self-assembling NeuroScaffold for acute spinal cord injury. Clinical studies are planned for late 2018.
“This submission to the FDA represents a new phase of SCI industry growth where minimally invasive products for spinal cord injury will fill R&D portfolios,” said Frank Reynolds, PixarBio’s chief executive officer, in a statement. “NR-SCI is a new drug injected to treat the onset of paralysis after a traumatic spinal cord injury, also known as ‘the secondary injury.’ Up to 90 percent of patients are not paralyzed from their primary injury, but instead they are paralyzed over a 21-day post-injury inflammation process that results in scar tissue formation. We will disrupt scar tissue formation.”
In February, PixarBio indicated it was expanding its Salem, New Hampshire office by leasing an additional 5,000 square feet of office space. Like today’s announcement, some of this expansion is related to a push by government agencies for non-opiate treatments for pain.
“Combating the heroin and opioid crisis is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” said New Hampshire’s Governor Maggie Hassan in a statement at the time, “and we must also partner with the private sector, from manufacturers to pharmacies and health care providers, to find solutions and change the way we treat pain in America.”
The latest announcement from PixarBio says that only three companies have non-addictive, post-operative pain treatments before the FDA, and “PixarBio’s NeuroRelease is the only treatment that can extend past five days to prevent ‘Rebound Pain,’ which contributes to the cycle of opiate addiction.”
“FDA approval for NeuroRelease’s 14 day post-op pain treatment is expected in 2018 and it will truly change the practice of medicine,” said Reynolds in a statement today. “PixarBio is now front and center in the race to develop the first FDA approved long acting morphine strength, non-addictive pain treatment that can defeat ‘Rebound Pain’ and we will not let PixarBio stakeholders down.”
The company also currently has laboratories and offices in Cambridge and Medford, Massachusetts. “The Governors of New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire have all been strong proponents of battling the opioid/opiate crisis and we look forward to providing physicians and legislators with a morphine strength, non-addictive option for pain treatment,” said Reynolds in a statement.