VCU Receives Grant to Study Novel Therapeutic for Tobacco Cessation

By Eric Peters and Christina Mestre

Cigarette smoking is the leading preventable cause of death in the United States, yet nearly 50 million Americans continue to smoke. While many smokers say they want to quit, currently approved tobacco cessation therapies may not be successful.

Virginia Commonwealth University has received a multi-year grant totaling $482,117 for the first year from the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) within the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to examine a novel therapeutic to treat nicotine dependence. NCATS will provide $12.7 million to nine academic research groups over multiple years.

In 2012, NCATS launched a collaborative pilot initiative, Discovering New Therapeutic Uses for Existing Molecules (New Therapeutic Uses), designed to develop partnerships between pharmaceutical companies and the biomedical research community to advance therapeutics development. The program matches researchers with industry partners with the ultimate goal of identifying promising new treatments for patients.

Researchers from VCU will work in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Pittsburgh and with Janssen Research & Development, LLC to explore a novel mechanism to help people quit smoking. This candidate compound may target a different group of smokers than those who have benefitted from existing therapeutics.

“Nicotine in tobacco targets many different molecules in the brain that promote smoking behavior. Typically, people are satisfied for a period of time after smoking a cigarette. We think this is due to stimulation of an off-switch,” said Darlene Brunzell, Ph.D., associate professor in the VCU Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology.

“The compound we are testing will target this off-switch, which should decrease the desire to smoke. We will also test if this compound will decrease withdrawal symptoms, including changes in cognition,” Brunzell said.

Preclinical studies will take place under Brunzell’s direction at VCU. Following the preclinical stage, clinical studies will be directed by Kenneth Perkins, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry, in collaboration with his colleague, Roy Chengappa, M.D., professor of psychiatry, at the University of Pittsburgh.

“These clinical research studies will test whether this compound’s mechanism aids in the ability to initiate quitting,” said Perkins.

Through the New Therapeutic Uses program, NCATS is seeking to accelerate development of novel treatments by re-engineering the way various sectors collaborate.

“Since Phase 1 pharmacokinetics and safety data has already been collected, this greatly expedites the translation of research from bench to bedside,” said Brunzell. “In fostering partnerships between academic researchers and pharmaceutical companies with existing compounds, this NCATS initiative will enable us to take a potential therapeutic for smoking cessation from the laboratory to early phase clinical trials within a year.”

Both VCU and the University of Pittsburgh are also part of a national consortium of academic research institutions funded by NCATS through its Clinical and Translational Science Awards (CTSA) program. The VCU Center for Clinical and Translational Research and the Clinical and Translational Science Institute at the University of Pittsburgh provide translational research resources to investigators.

“NCATS is focusing on transforming translational research so that treatments can be discovered and delivered to patients faster,” said Francis L. Macrina, Ph.D., vice president for research at VCU. “We are proud to be on the forefront of translational research as part of the CTSA consortium and to have received this latest NCATS grant within its New Therapeutic Uses program.”