NIH Awards $49M Grant To SRI For HIV/AIDS Drug Development
By Cyndi Root
SRI Biosciences announced in a press release that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded the company a seven-year grant of $49 million for HIV/AIDS drug development. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the NIH, is administering the grant for preclinical development of potential therapies, including the infections prevalent in the disease. The grant also funds research for microbicides to prevent the sexual transmission of HIV.
Jon Mirsalis, managing director of SRI Biosciences and co-Principal Investigator for the program, said, “SRI Biosciences has been supporting NIAID since 1991 in the development of new therapeutics for HIV/AIDS.”
NIH Grant
The SRI grant is funded by the NIH, NIAID, and the Department of Health and Human Services. SRI will assess the pharmacology and toxicology of the therapeutic agents in the preclinical phases. The company will also investigate therapeutic agents and microbicides and develop clinical dosage formulations. The data from SRI will enable NIH staff, pharmaceutical companies, and academics to pursue funding, partnerships, clinical studies, and fulfill regulatory requirements. The new grant folds three previous SRI grants into a new structure. Previous grants include safety testing of drugs and therapeutic vaccines, HIV drug development, and analytical chemistry evaluation studies.
About SRI Biosciences
SRI International is a nonprofit research organization that provides industry and government with basic and applied research. It focuses on moving innovations in the laboratory into the marketplace. Founded as Stanford Research Institute, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation began at Stanford University in 1946. It became independent of Stanford in 1970, changing its name to SRI.
In June 2014, SRI announced data from its collaboration with Sareum, an oncology company. The two are developing TYK2 kinase inhibitors for the treatment of inflammatory diseases. The company has also been working on testing the impact of a muscle spasticity drug (baclofen) on narcolepsy. In May, SRI neuroscientists found that baclofen is more effective than the best drug available for the sleep disorder.