ROAD TO THE CURE UPDATE JANUARY 2016
Category: Road to the CureWe’re driving the “Road to the Cure”…the dream of changing the lives of over ten million people is not only a huge goal…
2015 has been a very good year for ICBI
--particularly from a publicity/recognition point of view. While not spending additional funds on advertisement nor public relations, we are delighted to report that, in addition to Angel investors, two pharmaceutical companies, several investment bankers, and several academic institutions, including the prestigious Labatt Brain Tumor Research Centre (LBTRC), Toronto, Canada, made unsolicited contacts with ICB International, Inc:
We entered into a Material Transfer Agreement and commitment to validate ICBI’s SMART Molecules Technology at the headquarters of a large US pharmaceutical company. This Agreement is a precursor to exploring licensing and/or purchase options. A colony of mice is being generated for the validation experiment and will be shipped to the Pharmaceutical Company when the mice are about 10 months old. We’ve projected this to take place around April, 2016. Since our technology has already been validated by third parties, we are not expecting any problems except operator related issues. An investment banker has made an offer to arrange a $10.5M investment. While this is very exciting, their vision does not align with ICBI’s vision; consequently, we are not enthusiastic about this offer. We have set up collaborations with University of California at Irvine to conduct pharmacodynamics studies (the study of the biochemical and physiological effects of drugs on the body or on microorganisms or parasites within or on the body and the mechanisms of drug action and the relationship between drug concentration and effect) on several dozens of mice. This collaboration is in addition to our on-going collaboration with the University of California San Diego. Labatt Brain Tumor Research Centre, Toronto, Canada, has expressed a great deal of interest in setting up collaboration with ICBI on our Glioblastoma project: Early diagnosis and treatment of brain cancer using our SMART Molecule technology. NYU Medical Center, New York, has also tendered an offer to collaborate with ICBI on the Glioblastoma project. In the revered “Roots Analysis – Research & Consulting” trade publication we were listed as one of the top Biotech companies with BBB Technologies: Novel CNS Drug Delivery Approaches, 2015 – 2030 for investors and pharmaceutical companies to keep an eye on.
Second Grant Award from the Michael J. Fox Foundation
In July of 2015, ICBI was awarded its second grant, in the amount of $175,000, from the Michael J Fox Foundation to further ICBI’s Parkinson’s project.
Generation of SMART Molecules for Pharmacodynamics and Toxicity Study
Our biggest accomplishment in 2015 has been the production of SMART Molecule drugs for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases in quantities large enough to conduct pharmacodynamics and toxicity studies in several dozens of mice. We have gained the support of Dr. Frank La Ferla at University of California Irvine, who will be one of the investigators conducting one of our studies. The second study will most likely be conducted by Dr. Sylvie Rambo at PsychoGenics of New York University. PsychoGenics is working to generate a colony of transgenic mice needed for the study.
Plans for 2016
Our first priority is to meet the pharmaceutical company collaboration timeline. As was discussed at our annual shareholder’s meeting on December 12, 2015, while working on the timeline as described in paragraph 1, we will be conducting a very ambitious and costly pharmacodynamics and toxicity study on our potential Parkinson’s drug, α-Synuclein-SM. Our Alzheimer’s science is running neck-to-neck with our Parkinson’s science and; therefore, we will be conducting another robust and expensive pharmacodynamics and toxicity study on our potential Alzheimer’s drug, Aß-SM. With the successful completion of the above pharmacodynamics studies we look forward to receiving more pharmaceutical company representatives looking at our work.
While no one can predict the future, the odds of success of pharmacodynamics study are in our favor. We say this because the mouse monoclonal antibodies from other biotechs, pharmaceutical companies and academics, have had very poor (0.1%) brain uptake in their therapeutic effects in animals, albeit after a long treatment time. ICBI’s SMART Molecules have demonstrated at least 150 folds higher brain uptake than the mouse monoclonal antibodies and are expected to have a much superior therapeutic index to conventional mouse antibodies in a short treatment time. 2016 is anticipated to be a great year for ICBI, its investors and the Parkinson’s world with the successful experimental validation of our technology in the hands of other scientists at the large pharmaceutical company(ies) That being said, ICBI continues business as usual, focusing on conducting the key experiments discussed above. This could raise the stature of ICBI globally, particularly in the eyes of the BIG Pharmaceutical companies. We’re driving the “Road to the Cure” of Parkinson’s to its fruition. Our dream of changing the lives of over ten million people is not only a huge goal but will be very rewarding to us and our investors in all ways possible. We look forward to your input, feedback and participation in this project.
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