The first meeting of the minds occurred on Saturday, September 28th from 1:30-2:30 pm EST at the 2024 International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders (MDS) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. During a one-hour platform presentation, Associate Professor Dr. Richard Gordon from Queensland, Australia shared data and insights on the anti-Parkinsonian activity of lead EpicentRx small molecule, RRx-001 (nibrozetone).
The second meeting of the minds will occur around one week later at the 2024 Society for Neuroscience (SfN) Annual Meeting in Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center from October 5-9, 2024. There, at 9 am on October 9th, Associate Professor Dr. Richard Gordon will present soon-to-be-published data on the anti-ALS/MND activity of RRx-001, which based on the research of Dr. Gordon and others appears to be broadly effective in the neurodegenerative space.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Lou Gehrig’s disease, as it is known in the United States, or motor neurone disease (MND), as it is known elsewhere, afflicts around 121,000 patients worldwide. It is a fatal neurodegenerative disease of progressive and inexorable muscular paralysis from degeneration of motor neurons, which robs patients of the ability to speak, swallow, move, and finally breathe. In the hierarchy of terrible diseases, ALS/MND ranks at or near the very top. Worse yet, none of the three drugs approved for ALS/MND, edaravone, riluzole, and tofersen/BIIB067, are particularly effective, which makes this a disease of extreme and urgent unmet medical need.
Ironically, the renowned physicist, Dr. Stephen Hawking, shown below, who studied black holes, suffered from ALS/MND, itself a kind of black hole since the best way to manage ALS/MND is unknown. Hopefully, Dr. Gordon’s groundbreaking research on ALS/MND will shine a light on the potential of RRx-001 to modify the disease course and slow the development of complications for all the patients that like Dr. Hawking must bear the burden of progressive disability with no reprieve available to them except from death.
