PsychoGenics Awarded NIH HEAL Initiative Contract for Preclinical Screening Platform for Pain (PSPP)

PGI Holding Corporation (PsychoGenics) announced that it has been awarded an Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Health and Human Services, for the screening of investigational agents through the "NINDS Preclinical Screening Platform for Pain" (PSPP). The maximum value of the contract is $49.9 million over a five-year ordering period. This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from NINDS, NIH, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract Number 75N95019D00026.

PSPP is part of the Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative?, or NIH HEAL Initiative?. Launched in April 2018, the NIH HEAL Initiative aims to improve treatments for chronic pain, curb the rates of opioid use disorder and overdose and achieve long-term recovery from opioid addiction. The PSPP program will evaluate non-opioid assets in a battery of established preclinical pain models at PsychoGenics. The PSPP program accepts small molecules, biologics, devices, or natural products for evaluation, from researchers in academia and industry worldwide, at no cost to the participants. Under NINDS' direction, PsychoGenics will screen test candidates on a blinded and confidential basis.

"There is a tremendous need for non-addictive treatments for the more than 50 million individuals who suffer from chronic pain in the U.S.," said Emer Leahy, president and CEO of PsychoGenics. "It is an honor to be awarded this contract and we are excited to be working with NINDS to establish translational models for a variety of pain conditions in which we can test novel non-opioid treatments in a standardized way."

About the HEAL Initiative

The HEAL Initiative is a trans-NIH research effort focused on improving prevention and treatment for opioid misuse and addiction and enhancing pain management. The NIH HEAL Initiative is organized into six research focus areas. Within those focus areas, 12 NIH Institutes and Centers are leading 25 research programs to find scientific solutions to the opioid crisis. See https://heal.nih.gov/research.

About the PSPP Program

The goal of the PSPP Program is to provide a platform to identify and profile non-addictive, non-opioid therapeutics for pain. It is an efficient, rigorous, one-stop resource for preclinical screening of potential pain therapeutic agents.
https://heal.nih.gov/research/preclinical-translational/screening-platform

Interested parties can contact:

Smriti Iyengar, Ph.D.
Program Director, Division of Translational Research, NINDS/NIH
[email protected]

About PsychoGenics

PsychoGenics is a preclinical CRO with expertise in behavioral testing, electrophysiology, translational EEG, molecular biology, microdialysis and quantitative immunohistochemistry. The company offers a variety of rodent models that support research in pain and other areas such as Huntington's disease, autism spectrum disorders, psychosis/schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), muscular dystrophy, ALS, and other disorders. PsychoGenics has also pioneered the translation of rodent behavioral responses into robust, high-throughput, and high content phenotyping. Its drug discovery platforms, SmartCube^®, NeuroCube^®, and PhenoCube^® have been used in shared risk partnerships with major pharma companies such as Sunovion and Roche and has resulted in the discovery of several novel compounds now in clinical trials including SEP-363856 discovered in partnership with Sunovion, now in Phase III clinical trials for schizophrenia. For more information on PsychoGenics Inc. visit www.psychogenics.com.