Novelos Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCBB: NVLT), a biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of therapeutics to treat cancer and hepatitis, today announced that the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), in collaboration with Novelos, was awarded a $950,371 competitive grant by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study two Novelos compounds – NOV-002 and NOV-205 – for the mitigation and treatment of radiation-induced pulmonary injury. This 17-month grant will fund the assessment of both drug candidates in animal models designed to reflect pulmonary injury resulting from, for example, a terrorist incident involving a radiation-dispersal device (“dirty bomb”) or nuclear device or in a radiation accident such as at Chernobyl.
Dr. Kathryn D. Held is the Principal Investigator of the grant. Dr. Held is Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and Radiation Biologist and Associate Radiation Biologist, Department of Radiation Oncology at MGH. Co-PIs at MGH/Harvard include Drs. Mark C. Poznansky, Assistant Professor in the AIDS Research Center, and Leo E. Gerweck, Associate Professor in Radiation Oncology.
“Radiation injury studies have indicated that among organs whose ablation leads to death, lung is the second most sensitive organ system after the hematopoietic system,” said Dr. Held. “We want to determine whether certain compounds have a beneficial effect on radiation-induced lung damage.”