Regenerating Injured Tissue and Slowing Down Degeneration with New Therapies
$155k multiple awards
$1.5
million in federal funding
Our body has the ability to regenerate complex tissues and organs, but regeneration fails because regenerative pathways are inactivated as we age. Revidia Therapeutics is a regenerative medicine company that develops small molecule therapies to unlock the body’s innate regenerative potential.
Dr. Kevin Strange, Founder, Principal Scientist, and former CEO of Revidia Therapeutics is no stranger to regeneration and aging research in Maine. He served as the first full-time president and director of Maine’s MDI Biological Laboratory, where he worked closely with MTI’s President at the time. Maine Magazine celebrated Dr. Stange’s efforts to transform the “largely unknown” MDI Biological Laboratory into a “global mecca of scientific discovery” and to pioneer new approaches in regenerative medicine focused on developing new drugs to treat diseases and injuries.
When it came time to launch Revidia Therapeutics, Dr. Strange knew that MTI would serve as a valuable ally and offer much-needed support. Through 2013-2019, MTI provided the company with over $150,000 in early-stage funding. The grants helped fund a variety of initiatives, including patent applications and research and development. Revidia Therapeutics has leveraged this critical MTI support into more than $7 million in private investment, and an additional $2.5 million in non-dilutive funding, including an NIH Phase 2 SBIR grant.
Revidia’s leading drug candidate, MSI-1436, slows degeneration and stimulates regeneration of injured heart, skeletal muscle, skin, bone, nerve, and connective and vascular tissues in lower vertebrates and mammals.
MSI-1436 has the potential to treat multiple injuries and diseases. In recent studies, MSI-1436 reversed acute ischemic heart injury and reversed degenerative changes in heart and skeletal muscle of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) in a mouse.
Scientific breakthroughs like these require significant research and development, as well as funding.
“MTI has always been there for help, advice and early-stage funding when no one else was. I could not have launched Revidia without MTI and I continue to maintain close contact with Brian and other MTI leadership,” says Dr. Strange.
With ongoing support, Revidia Therapeutics hopes to continue the development of MSI-1436 to treat heart damage in humans. Revidia is currently pursuing a novel subcutaneous formulation of the drug to slow degenerative changes in heart and skeletal muscles in DMD patients. Less than 13% of DMD patients have access to treatment options other than steroids, and most patients die from heart failure as young adults. Revidia Therapeutics is optimistic that MSI-1436 can give DMD patients new treatment options to slow heart and skeletal muscle degeneration.