Epilepsy Foundation Awards $300,000 in Grants to Support Development of Epilepsy Treatments

The Epilepsy Foundation has awarded New Therapy Commercialization Grants totaling $300,000 to scientists with the goal of accelerating the development of therapies for those living with poorly controlled seizures. One grant was awarded to Matthew Gentry, PhD, professor at the University of Kentucky and the other to Greg Worrell MD, PhD, professor of neurology and chair of clinical neurophysiology at Mayo Clinic. Each of the awardees applied in partnership with a commercial entity which will match the grant funding. Both applications underwent a rigorous scientific advisory and a business review process and were selected among nine applicants. The grants were based on potential for impact and value to patients, likelihood of successful development — including regulatory approval — and the development timeframe.

"Every day, millions of people across the world lose seconds, minutes or hours of their lives to seizures and these precious moments can never be regained," said Sonya Dumanis, PhD, senior director of innovation at the Epilepsy Foundation. "Depending on the type of epilepsy, seizures can often change lives and result in the loss of friends, jobs, mobility, and even the ability to function. Seizures can also increase the risk of death. That's why our New Therapy Commercialization Grants Program funds research that has the potential to discover new treatment options, and ultimately cures. Our focus is to encourage innovation and foster entrepreneurship in order to get new therapies to market faster for people living with epilepsy."

The grants are part of the Foundation's Epilepsy Therapy Project, a research program that seeks to advance innovative ideas in epilepsy, seizure treatment, and care in a timeframe that matters. Dr. Gentry was awarded $150,000 to support pre-clinical testing of a compound (VAL-1221) that has the potential to treat Lafora disease, a progressive epilepsy. Lafora disease is a rare and fatal epilepsy that starts in childhood and is caused by genetic abnormalities in the brain's ability to process glycogen. Dr. Gentry partnered with Valerion Therapeutics to develop VAL-1221, which is currently in clinical trials for another glycogen storage disease called Pompe disease. Preliminary evidence suggests that VAL-1221 can degrade the aberrant glycogen accumulations found in the cells of those diagnosed with Lafora epilepsy.

Dr. Worrell was awarded $150,000 to advance his work with Cadence Neuroscience which has developed a protocol that tests a variety of electrical stimulation parameters while an individual with intractable epilepsy is undergoing phase II evaluation for surgery. Preliminary evidence suggests that this procedure can be used to tailor brain stimulation therapy to each individual and enhance seizure control compared to currently used protocols. Funds from this award will be used to develop a user-friendly workstation to allow other clinicians to personalize and optimize brain stimulation therapies for epilepsy.

Since 2006, the Foundation's Epilepsy Therapy Project has invested more than $8.3 million in 90 different initiatives and supported more than 40 percent of the products being developed for epilepsy in the clinical pipeline over the past decade. In 2007, the Epilepsy Foundation awarded a grant to UCLA School of Medicine to support a clinical trial for trigeminal nerve stimulation in those with poorly controlled epilepsy. The trial led to the development of the Monarch eTNS (Trigeminal Nerve Stimulation) System, which received approval in Europe in 2015 to treat depression and epilepsy. In 2013, Dr. Orrin Devinsky at New York University received a Foundation grant to support the early proof of concept open-label trial to test the safety of Epidiolex in two severe epilepsies known as Lennox-Gastaut and Dravet syndromes. These trials helped pave the way for the development and commercialization of Epidiolex, which was approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in 2018 to treat seizures associated with Lennox-Gastaut and Dravet syndromes in patients two years of age or older.

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