Bone Medical is pleased to announce that its BN006 programme for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) has been accepted as an innovation priority by The Skolkovo Foundation, the Russian government backed non-profit organization formed to stimulate the development of innovation-based industries in Russia that have been deemed important to its economy.
The approval means that the Company can become a participant in the Skolkovo Innovation Centre, making it eligible to seek grant funding to support additional research in Russia, advancing the BN006 programme.
“This is a significant achievement,” said Dr Roger New, CSO and chairman, “because the screening process is selectively focused on technologies of very high quality that clearly address important needs for the country. We were pleased to note that the BN006 project scored very highly in Skolkovo’s expert panel review. Russia has the highest prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis of any of the 4 BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries.”
Peter Young, CEO added,
“Bone Medical Ltd is energetically pursuing collaborations and partnering opportunities for its product programs to support their development and believes that establishing a research centre in the Russian Skolkovo Innovation Centre with matched funding from the Skolkovo Foundation could be instrumental in accomplishing this for the important Russian market, as well as generating useful data for BN006 in other countries.”
Gelena Lifshitz, head of medical programs of the Skolkovo Foundation said the
“prevalence of RA in Russia is about 1% of population and it’s an economic burden which equals the burden of cardiac arrest”. She also noted that currently treating RA is difficult, costly and often not effective and this is one of the reasons why the Skolkovo Biomedical cluster supports research in this area. “RA, “she said, “is one of the wide-spread autoimmune diseases, and more than 7 Skolkovo resident companies are developing treatments against this class of diseases. TNF inhibitors have proven to be safe and effective for particular groups of patients. Nevertheless, oral forms aren’t available on the market. Oral anti-TNF therapies will make the treatment more comfortable for the patients and therefore increase patients' compliance. She welcomed technology transfer projects because of lower risks and mutual scientific benefit from international collaboration. “We appreciate the potential of international science and would be interested to develop long lasting collaborations, Gelena Lifshitz said.
“prevalence of RA in Russia is about 1% of population and it’s an economic burden which equals the burden of cardiac arrest”. She also noted that currently treating RA is difficult, costly and often not effective and this is one of the reasons why the Skolkovo Biomedical cluster supports research in this area. “RA, “she said, “is one of the wide-spread autoimmune diseases, and more than 7 Skolkovo resident companies are developing treatments against this class of diseases.
TNF inhibitors have proven to be safe and effective for particular groups of patients. Nevertheless, oral forms aren’t available on the market. Oral anti-TNF therapies will make the treatment more comfortable for the patients and therefore increase patients' compliance. She welcomed technology transfer projects because of lower risks and mutual scientific benefit from international collaboration. “We appreciate the potential of international science and would be interested to develop long lasting collaborations, Gelena Lifshitz said.