Press Release

13 April 2016

New company joins EPITARGET Consortium

EPITARGET is pleased to announce that a new partner – Nanomerics - has joined the EPITARGET Consortium which consists of 18 partners from 9 different European countries and is focused on tackling epilepsy, a disease that affects more than 50 million people world-wide.

Nanomerics will be contributing to the consortium’s therapeutic goals through its Molecular Envelope Technology (MET). Nanomerics’ MET is useful for the delivery of drugs to the brain and should facilitate the delivery of new epilepsy treatments discovered by the EPITARGET consortium. The consortium is led by Professor Merab Kokaia of Lund University in Sweden. Nanomerics’ Chief Executive Officer, Professor Andreas G. Schatzlein says, “I am delighted that the EPITARGET consortium has chosen Nanomerics as one of its key drug delivery partners. This is a wonderful opportunity to test Nanomerics’ MET in a challenging disease setting and we look forward to working with Merab and his team.” Professor Merab Kokaia says, “We are really pleased that Nanomerics has agreed to join our consortium and we look forward to working with the company to work on innovative solutions for this condition."

Notes for Editors
undefined Nanomerics Ltd. is a private specialty company. Nanomerics was spun out from UCL and has been operational since 2011. Nanomerics has an exclusive licence from UCL to the Molecular Envelope Technology, invented by its founders. Nanomerics’ Molecular Envelope Technology comprises a suite of self assembling drug delivery polymers. Nanomerics is using its Molecular Envelope Technology to develop New Therapeutic Entities.
undefined EPITARGET is a consortium of 18 partners focused on tackling epilepsy and receives funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n°602102.

9 December 2015

The 7th Framework Programme funded EPITARGET consortium releases the Common Data Elements for preclinical epilepsy studies

The attempts to translate the preclinical treatment discoveries to clinically used therapies have mostly failed as pointed out by a recent high profile article in Nature ( undefined Landis et al., Nature. 2012 Oct 11;490(7419):187-91). This also applies to epilepsy, the fourth common neurological disease affecting over 50 million people worldwide, and with no treatments to prevent its development in patients at risk, or cure for those who already have epilepsy.

The EPITARGET consortium of 18 partners from 9 different European countries has undertaken the challenge to crack the code of epileptogenesis. As the first step, the EPITARGET Consortium has released Common Data Elements (CDEs) for preclinical epilepsy studies which it uses to harmonize the sample and data collection and data analysis. Professor Asla Pitkänen who is the WP Leader for this activity states: “By using CDEs, the EPITARGET Consortium has taken the critical step to provide remedy to underpowered preclinical epilepsy studies”. By using harmonized methodologies and reporting, the Consortium aims at improving the statistical power and reproducibility of the data generated.

With these new tools, CDEs and database, the EPITARGET consortium is leading the way towards powered and reproducible studies on epilepsy. The Consortium has made the CDEs publicly available on its website to encourage the preclinical research community in other fields to take similar actions. The CDEs can be accessed via undefined www.epitarget.eu/cdes.