Rhenovia launches drug discovery for Huntington's disease

Rhenovia Pharma of Cambridge and Mulhouse, France has initiated drug research programs in rare, orphan and neglected diseases, beginning with Huntingtons disease (HD) and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), according to a written announcement from the company.

The company works to develop new medications to treat neurodegenerative, neurological and psychiatric diseases. As a first step, Rhenovia is building a new biosimulation platform aimed at modeling the complex interplay between biological mechanisms in striatum, the brain region that is most affected in Huntingtons disease. HD is a fatal, rare neurodegenerative disease that is particularly difficult to treat because of the very broad spectrum of symptoms it causes, involving involuntary movement disorders, cognitive deficits and psychiatric manifestations, according to the company.

It is exactly because of this variety and often opposite syndromes that the biosimulation approach is probably the most appropriate strategy in the search for new treatments, said Serge Bischoff, president and CEO of Rhenovia. It will allow us to integrate the complexity of the biological systems affected by HD and to address the multifactorial nature of this disease.

Rare diseases are defined as those affecting fewer than one in 2,000, 80 percent of which are caused by genetic defects. They also include rare forms of cancer, auto-immune disorders, congenital malformations, infectious diseases and intoxications.

No cures exist for most rare diseases. The only currently available treatments are those that improve the quality of life. The annual Rare Diseases Day, which took place earlier this year, extends the international recognition of these diseases with the aim of improving diagnosis and treatment.

The objective of Rhenovias HD program is to provide new tools and solutions to optimize the Drug Discovery and Development (DD&D) process and accelerate the search for new treatment strategies and medications, not only for relieving HD patients from their symptoms, but also for modifying the course of their illness. A further objective is to consolidate Rhenovias own pipeline of drug candidates.

Rhenovia founded its French headquarters in 2007 and its newly created subsidiary Rhenovia Inc. opened a Cambridge office in January. The parent company now employs 20 people in France, Switzerland, Germany and the US, and recently presented initial data on how the company approaches HD syndromes by biosimulation at the Huntingtons Diseases Therapeutics Conference in California.

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Rhenovia launches drug discovery for Huntington's disease