Simmaron’s Dr. Avik Roy has won an NIH R21 grant for “ATG13: A new player in MECFS.” April 2023

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Elevated ATG13 in serum of pwME stimulates oxidative stress response in microglial cells , 2022, Gottschalk et al
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From email:

Simmaron Research Wins our 1st NIH Grant!

We are proud to announce our very own Dr. Avik Roy PhD and Dr. Gunnar Gottschalk PhD have been awarded a competitive R21 grant from the National Institutes of Health for their study "ATG13: A new player in ME/CFS." This grant will fund our ground-breaking work in autophagy in ME/CFS.

We know how hard-won NIH grants are, and Simmaron's very first NIH grant received an EXCELLENT score!

This is huge, and we are so lucky to have Dr. Roy as Chief Scientific Officer of Simmaron, battling for ME/CFS with our dedicated team.

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NIH Funding to Identify Potential Pathways for Treatments

Dr. Roy is known for his success finding treatable pathways in Parkinson's, Alzheimers, and related diseases.

This ATG-13 study will help Simmaron’s team to develop a targeted pathway for treating neuroinflammation found in diseases like ME/CFS, POTS, and Long-Covid.

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Our Early ATG-13 Findings

Last year, our groundbreaking publication on autophagy in ME/CFS showed a protein called ATG-13 is a player in brain inflammation. Our new NIH grant, which was very well received by reviewers, will further this investigation into whether ATG-13 can be a treatable pathway for ME/CFS.

‘Autophagy’ is the critical waste-removal process of the cell that we have recently shown to be dysfunctional in ME/CFS patients.

Normally, this protein is inside the cell where it initiates the cell’s critical “clean up” process called autophagy. Instead, ATG-13 in ME/CFS patients was roving free, small enough to permeate the vascular system. So small, in fact, that it was able to cross the blood brain barrier, where we found it setting off the microglia—the brain's immune cells.

We believe we have found a critical pathway involved in post-exertional malaise (PEM), the hallmark symptom of ME/CFS.

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Let’s Change Everything about ME, LongCovid, and POTS Together!

We're aiming squarely at building the tools for drug discovery so ME, POTS and Long-Covid patients can finally have treatments. Thank you for supporting our team.

 

Congrats to Avik et al./Simmaron!! Actual good news for a change! Also nice to hear that it received excellent scores from the reviewers!

https://twitter.com/user/status/1649830172731019265

 

Also this up coming event

https://twitter.com/user/status/1645046592070623233

 

I believe this is a useful line of research because I have an interest in low-level neuroinflammation and ME.

 

Call is on now