New ALS impact from ImStar

 VANCOUVER, British Columbia ”Biotechnology company ImStar Therapeutics has announced the selection of IMS-088 as its lead drug candidate for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. In connection with this move, the company has also filed a patent application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office covering novel withanolide therapeutics.

At present, no effective treatments are available for this disease, says Daniel Wattier, CEO of ImStar. The only drug approved for the treatment of ALS, Rilutek, was approved in 1995.The experience of Rilutek is that it may extend survival by up to three months, at least, that was what was demonstrated in a clinical trial, explains Wattier. However, experience shows it really has very minimal impact on the disease and it has some side effects. They're not atrocious, but they're meaningful enough that it's not the greatest drug to take. So this is a disease area where new treatments that go after the underlying mechanism of disease are just vitally needed.

That's where ImStar's IMS-088 comes in. The compound is the result of a discovery by Dr. Jean-Pierre Julien, co-founder and chief scientific officer at ImStar, of a new target for ALS: TDP-43 associated NF-kB activation (TANA). TAR DNA-binding protein 43 (TDP-43) was recently identified as the primary disease-associated protein in ALS. While the protein normally regulates gene expression and is found in the nucleus of cells, it is misprocessed in ALS-a