June 23, 2015
By Mark Terry, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
Saratoga, Calif.-based nonprofit, The Myelin Repair Foundation (MRF), announced yesterday that it was shutting down. The stated reason was the difficulty in raising funds to keep up with, in the foundation’s case, surprisingly low research costs.
The MRF was founded in 2002 by Scott Johnson, a California entrepreneur who had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when he was 20. The MRF’s research model was dubbed the Accelerated Research Collaboration (ARC) model, which allowed researchers in different labs that received MRF funding to perform experiments together and share results in real time.
Funding for MRF came from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Donaghue Foundation, the Thomas H. Maren Foundation, U.S. Venture Partners and others. For the most part, MRF operated on about $5 million annually. Despite this relatively low level of funding, its approach had an impact.
In his closing letter, Johnson points out that although the MRF received donations from 29 countries, 92 percent of its revenue came from only 56 donors.
“Recently several large donations that we had been counting on failed to materialize. As a result we do not have sufficient funds to fund our next fiscal year which begins on July 1. In order to ensure that our accomplishments to date and work in progress best serve MS patients, we will use the funds we have in hand to preserve the science and momentum we have created.”
The MRF plans to shutter its doors on Aug. 31, 2015.
On June 14, 2002, the MRF announced a myelin repair Phase I clinical trial for MS that was two years ahead of schedule.
It was conducted at Cleveland Clinic and was designed to study the efficacy of a new myelin repair pathway with mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) based on MRF-support research conducted by Robert Miller, professor of neurosciences and vice president for research and technology management at Case Western Reserve University .
Recently, on April 30, 2015, the MRF, in partnership with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced that patients were being enrolled in a clinical trial to study guanabenz, an FDA-approved drug for high blood pressure that was targeted by MRF-funded researched as a possible therapy to cut the loss of myelin in MS patients.
The trial is a collaboration between the MRF and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at NIH. It is being led by Irene Cortese and Daniel Reich of the NIH.
In a statement on the foundation’s website, Al Sandrock, chief medical officer of Biogen, Inc., said, “The MRF was the pioneer in identifying the need for and driving the importance of myelin repair, as well as bringing together top experts in the field to move groundbreaking research forward. The work of the foundation and its innovative approach to collaboration has sparked many companies to begin their own research in this important space.”
This was echoed by Ben Starres, a researcher at Stanford University, stating, “With the MRF drug validation unit, we were just in the process of converting these discoveries into new drugs and it is tragic that this work is now coming to an abrupt halt just as it was about to bear fruit for MS patients. Because I do not believe there is any entity, pharma included, that will fill the gap left as MRF closes down.”
As Rumors Swirl About GlaxoSmithKline Bid, Who Could Suitors Be?
Rumors are swirling that Swiss-based Roche and U.S.-based Johnson & Johnson are eying the U.K. company for approximately $143 billion. But Roche and J&J aren’t the only companies though who have been thought could go after the elephant that is Glaxo.
Last month there was buzz that Pfizer Inc. was considering acquiring Glaxo, a year after it failed to acquire AstraZeneca PLC . Just this month over a third of respondents in a poll conducted by BioSpace believe that AstraZeneca PLC could be in the running to acquire struggling GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
So BioSpace wants to ask our readers again what they predict for this new dealmaking bonanza. Will Glaxo go—and if so, to whom?
