Biogen Idec says it will use technologies sub-licensed from The Myelin Repair Foundation to generate a novel mouse model for all demyelinating diseases, including multiple sclerosis.

Myelin is the fatty protective sheath surrounding nerve fibers of the central nervous system. In multiple sclerosis, the body’s immune system attacks and destroys myelin, interfering with the transmission of nerve signals. It is incurable and leads to a wide range of debilitating symptoms, including death.

The mouse model is designed to facilitate discovery of drugs that can repair myelin damage from MS and other demyelinating diseases such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and depression. It displays characteristics suggestive of the progressive form of MS, not yet available in any other mouse model. It is also unique because the demyelination the mice display is the result of the specific loss of the principal target cells in multiple sclerosis, which can facilitate the identification of potential treatments that will restore myelin production by these target cells.

“Our collaborative efforts with MRF scientists will evaluate drug candidates’ effectiveness in reversing myelin damage and hopefully advance R&D efforts for a new generation of MS therapeutics,” says Ken Rhodes, vice president of neurology research at Biogen. In addition, Biogen will collaborate with MRF to improve the technology’s capability to speed clinical development.

Scott Johnson, MRF’s president and CEO, founded the organization to accelerate the development of treatments that could repair myelin. Current treatments for MS mainly aim to modulate the immune system and keep it in check. MRF’s ultimate goal is to benefit patients by creating a pharmacopeia of great therapeutics for physicians to use in treating patients with demyelinating diseases. Ultimately, the non-profit will either finish the job and dissolve or turn its drug development models, which also include a translational medicine platform and a drug repurposing scheme, toward other therapeutics.

To date, MRF’s Accelerated Research Collaboration model has generated the filing of more than 20 patent applications, with between 8 and 10 of them already issued, says Mike Gresser, MRF’s chief scientific officer.

The licensing deal with Biogen is the first of what Gresser hopes will be many more such deals. “Approaching Biogen was a natural for us,” says Gresser. Biogen already has an experimental antibody drug in development designed to drive myelin repair that is being shown to be safe and well-tolerated and is beginning to be tested for efficacy.

The mouse model was developed by Brian Popko and Maria Traka from the University of Chicago in collaboration with Stephen Miller and Joseph Podojil from Northwestern University under the MRF’s Accelerated Research Collaboration model, which centers on a collaborative research approach designed to accelerate the translation of academic research discoveries to the industry setting. MRF’s model involves a consortium of researchers from various institutions who agree to work together and share information. MRF funds the research and the patenting of inventions that arise from it. The institutions, primarily universities, own the resulting intellectual property, while the MRF has exclusive rights to license intellectual property for all indications. Any revenue generated by the licenses is split 50/50 between the MRF, which plows its share back into research, and the consortium where it is divided evenly among the participating institutions.