Inhibikase Therapeutics receives Phase II SBIR grant to advance novel RAMP medicinal chemistry program

Inhibikase Therapeutics, Inc. announces the receipt of a Phase II SBIR grant in the amount of $1.54 million dollars from the U.S. National Institutes of Health to advance its novel Re-engineering with Metabolism Preserved (RAMP) medicinal chemistry program.

RAMP, one of two platform technologies developed by Inhibikase in the past four years, is a method of re-engineering small molecule protein kinase inhibitors to enhance their potency as much as 40-fold without altering how the drugs are broken down in the body. RAMP offers the opportunity to preserve favorable side-effect profiles of kinase inhibitors that may already be marketed, but that lack sufficient potency to be broadly effective. By preserving the route of metabolism, and then enhancing the intrinsic potency of the drug, two positive safety benefits are realized: no new side effects and lower drug doses to reach the same therapeutic outcome. By going to lower doses, the opportunity exists to not only preserve the existing safety profile of a drug, but to further improve it since less drug will have to be given at each dose.

"RAMP has been a brainchild in the Company for nearly five years, and its utility has now been recognized. New molecules emerging from RAMP will further advance our efforts at controlling devastating infections of the central nervous system like Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy (PML) and in curing infections arising in kidney, lung and bone marrow transplant recipients. But RAMP may offer something even much more, because the same agent, at the same dose could be equally effective at controlling certain blood and stomach cancers which arise from defects in the same targets used to cure infectious disease. Indeed, RAMP's greatest promise will come by crossing therapeutic areas with single drugs at fixed dose applied to unrelated human ailments," said Company President & CEO Dr. Milton Werner.