New phase II grant for Oricula Therapeutics LLC.

PR Newswire reports that the grant of USD 2 million was awarded through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, within the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Oricula Therapeutics focuses on discovery of protective treatments to preserve hearing and balance from the damaging effects of medications and aging.

The grant will be used to support completion of the preclinical phase for the biotech’s lead clinical compound, ORC-13661, and submission of an investigational drug application for subsequent clinical trials in this indication. Up to 20% of patients treated with aminoglycosides have been reported to develop measurable, irreversible hearing loss or even deafness.

It is hoped that ORC-13661 will protect patients from hearing loss caused by these antibiotics, an important but underused class of antibacterials that can be beneficial in particularly serious infections, such as endocarditis, neonatal septicemia, and multidrug resistant tuberculosis, according to the company.

The compound has shown 100% hearing protection in rats co-administered a 10-day course of the aminoglycoside, amikacin. “Now that the preclinical workup is assured, I’m spending much of my time designing the ideal first-in-human proof-of-concept clinical trials for our lead compound,” said Malcolm Gleser MD, PhD, CEO at Oricula.

Source: PR Newswire; Oricula Therapeutics, LLC