NeuroGate Gets $25K Epilepsy Foundation OK

NeuroGate founder Harold Kohn, Ph.D. Photo courtesy of UNC.

Chapel Hill development-stage pharmaceutical company NeuroGate Therapeutics, a spinout from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been awarded a $25,000 grant from the Epilepsy Foundation to help the company develop its unique treatment for the debilitating condition.

The award, called the Epilepsy Innovation Seal of Excellence, or SEAL, also gives NeuroGate the right to tout the Foundation’s endorsement to further the company’s fundraising efforts.

NeuroGate, founded in 2011 by UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy professor Harold Kohn, Ph.D., merges two classes of drugs into one that appears to control seizures. The merged therapeutic targets nerve cell hyperexcitability, a phenomenon that is the hallmark of signaling in seizures and neuropathic pain.

Kohn is a Kenan Distinguished Professor in the pharmacy school’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry. In animal tests, his approach appears to provide improved anti-seizures properties with lower adverse side effects than current standards of care.

One year ago the company received a $250,000 Small Business Technology Transfer grant from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Another company, BioCrea GmbH, of Germany, also received the Foundation’s cash and SEAL award.

The Epilepsy Foundation, based in Landover, Maryland, is a national organization dedicated to providing services and support to all people living with epilepsy and seizures.

The SEAL is part of the Foundation’s mandate to recognize critical advancements in the field of epilepsy. The initiative is designed to facilitate access to funding and resources that will carry the recipients’ work through proof of concept and beyond, which typically costs from $1 million to $5 million.

“These potential drugs exhibited superb anticonvulsant activities in NIH anticonvulsant screening models, and they exhibit at least two mechanisms of action, which studies show are proven pathways for the control of nerve cell hyperexcitability,” said the Foundation’s chief scientific officer, Roger Porter, M.D. “No approved therapy for seizure control possesses this combination of unique mechanisms.”

Foundation funding such as this, sometimes called venture philanthropy, has become increasingly vital to early-stage companies as venture capital investment groups grow more risk-averse.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center has staged two highly popular events in recent years to bring foundation executives to the state for meetings with companies.

The first, in 2011, brought 150 entrepreneurs and several foundation executives to NCBiotech as part of a CED program exploring ways disease-related charities can help small companies survive early funding droughts.

The second, the Southeast Venture Philanthropy Summit 2013, was a regional event organized by NCBiotech that included more than 300 participants and representatives of more than 30 national foundations.