Quiver Bioscience, a discovery technology and therapeutics company focused on central nervous system disorders and chronic pain, has secured a $2.15 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Institutes of Health to advance its AI-driven drug safety prediction platform. The three-year grant, awarded by the National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke, will fund the "Safe-OPTION: Optical Physiology To Interrogate Oligonucleotide Neurotoxicity" project.
Addressing Critical Safety Challenges in ASO Development
The funding addresses a significant challenge in antisense oligonucleotide therapeutics development for neurological conditions. While ASO therapeutics offer precision regulation of disease target activity and have demonstrated clinical success for neurological disorders, their development faces the critical challenge of ensuring candidates avoid modality-specific neurotoxicity. Current approaches require lengthy preclinical safety studies across multiple animal species, creating bottlenecks in the drug development process.
Integrated AI/ML Platform for Enhanced Prediction
Quiver's approach combines machine learning-based in silico ASO design tools with a series of all-optical electrophysiology platform-based in vitro neuronal functional assays. The company will benchmark their predictive algorithm with empirical data from rodent studies to create a comprehensive safety assessment platform.
The company's existing drug discovery platform integrates disease-relevant human neuronal models, all-optical electrophysiology-based functional readouts, and AI/ML-enabled analytics to provide unique insights into neurological disorders and accelerate drug development. The new SBIR funding will further augment these existing ASO drug development capabilities.
Clinical and Commercial Impact
The enhanced platform is designed to accelerate the ASO drug development process by rapidly identifying lead molecules with better probability of clinical success. By incorporating improved earlier predictors of ASO-induced acute and delayed onset neurotoxicity, the platform aims to enable more efficient ASO drug development while reducing both costs and time associated with preclinical animal studies.
Expanding Therapeutic Pipeline
This funding comes as Quiver continues to advance multiple CNS programs. The company recently appointed co-founder Graham Dempsey as CEO to lead scaling of its AI-driven CNS platform and advance its lead antisense oligonucleotide program targeting Nav1.7 for chronic pain treatment into clinical trials.
Quiver has also established research collaborations with QurAlis Corporation for Fragile X syndrome therapeutics and with the Dup15q Alliance to advance antisense oligonucleotide programs for chromosome 15q duplication syndrome, leveraging its proprietary "Genomic Positioning System" drug discovery platform.
