Moleculera Labs today announced the receipt of a two-year, $300,000 matching grant from the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST). This grant supports the development and clinical validation of new diagnostic testing panels to identify autoantibodies directed against neuronal antigens in patients experiencing neuropsychiatric disorders such as depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Such panels are intended to assist physicians in identifying the subset of patients whose symptoms may actually be caused by underlying treatable infection-triggered autoimmune and inflammatory responses.
Research by Madeleine Cunningham, Ph.D., Moleculera’s co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer, and her collaborators has led to development of the Cunningham Panel™, which measures relevant anti-neuronal antibodies and neuronal cell-activating antibodies circulating in the patient’s blood, as well as the activity of a key enzyme in the brain involved in the up-regulation of many neurotransmitters including dopamine. This test panel aids physicians in identifying individuals with PANDAS or PANS, thus enabling those children to receive appropriate anti-infective and/or immunological treatment that often results in a dramatic reduction or resolution of symptoms, without resorting to symptomatic control with neuropsychiatric drugs alone.