Congratulation, Dr. Martin Safo!
I am extremely happy to report that Prof. Safo’s anti-sickling agent ILX002 has been taken up for pre-clinical and clinical development by the NHLBI under the CATALYZE Drug Development Program. He had been funded by an R61/R33 grant so far to perform a number of pre-clinical studies and acceptance into the NIH CATALYZE Program implies that his results have satisfied the program leaders of the value of investing in GMP scale synthesis, GMP toxicological studies, etc. The Program will attempt to develop the molecule sufficiently well so that big pharma can perform human phase I clinical studies, which are anticipated to begin in a year or so. This is great news for Prof. Safo, his collaborators (Drs. Yan Zhang and Jurgen Venitz), the Department and the School. Please join me in congratulating Prof. Safo for this success!! We wish him the best of experiments and results!! – Umesh