Announce Fall Grant Application Cycle is Now Open
WASHINGTON, June 21, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Epilepsy Therapy Project (ETP) and the Epilepsy Foundation (EF) today announced the latest grant recipients of their New Therapy Grants Program, a unique joint venture of the two non-profit epilepsy organizations to advance clinical development and commercialization of promising epilepsy therapies.The grant awards will support the development of four important new technologies:
"We are continuing to support new technologies to detect, monitor and treat epilepsy through the New Therapy Grants award program," said Warren Lammert, Chairman of the Epilepsy Therapy Project. "In this grant cycle, we have selected four projects that may prove critical to managing and treating epilepsy and to accelerating the development of future new therapies. With these grants and the support and guidance our organizations can offer, we are advancing important new products to market and so to people with epilepsy."
For a comprehensive list of all epilepsy therapies in development including past projects supported by the New Therapy Grants program, please visit http://www.epilepsy.com/etp/pipeline_new_therapies.The epilepsy pipeline identifies the most promising products from early-stage development to commercial-stage, and whether a product is currently available in the US or internationally.
"The mission of this collaborative grant program is to improve the quality of life for people living with epilepsy in their lifetimes," said Sandy Finucane, Executive Vice President of the Epilepsy Foundation. "Epilepsy affects nearly three million people in the United States and 65 million people worldwide.Even with current treatments, close to one third of people with epilepsy live with uncontrolled seizures and there remains an overwhelming need for new treatment options."
The Grant Recipients
High Definition Cathodal Transcranial Direct Current for Treatment of Focal Status Epilepticus (Soterix Medical Inc., New York, NY):
Dr. Rotenberg and his team are developing a novel, non-invasive form of cathodal transcranial direct current (tDCS), a painless and safe method for focal brain stimulation. Despite its favorable safety profile and a proven capacity to modulate cortical excitability, conventional tDCS technology has not successfully been applied to the treatment of focal status epilepticus (FSE), in part due to the poor spatial targeting. The research team proposes to overcome this limitation with High Definition (HD)-tDCS and hypothesizes that HD-tDCS can safely reduce seizure burden in patients with FSE.FSE is characterized by repetitive discrete seizures often lasting more than an hour (at times as long as days or weeks). Unfortunately, drug treatments are often ineffective.