Snowdon Inc.

Therapeutic Areas

Snowdon is focused on four therapeutic areas that address significant medical needs in the nation and the world, including cancer, pain, neurological disorders, and infectious diseases.

Cancer
Cancer is predicted to become the leading cause of death, surpassing heart disease by the end of this decade. Despite significant progress in our understanding of the molecular defects that contribute to the development of cancer, this complex disease remains a significant health problem. Snowdon is developing SND-119 as an oral treatment for melanoma. SND-119 has shown encouraging results in initial preclinical studies, and clinical trials are expected to begin in 2012. [more]

Acute and Chronic Pain
The development of pharmaceutical agents that are safe, effective and long acting truly represents the “Holy Grail” of pain management. Pain can be divided into two broad types: acute and chronic. Acute pain is usually caused by a traumatic event, such as a broken bone, back injury, skin burn, or severe headache, whereas chronic pain often arises from a degenerative disease such as cancer or arthritis or from damage to the nervous system (neuropathic pain). Some familiar causes of neuropathic pain are shingles, diabetes (diabetic neuropathy), fibromyalgia, and multiple sclerosis, to name only a few. In many cases, the causes of chronic, neuropathic pain are unknown.

The need for pain medications is substantial and growing rapidly, driven in part by the increasingly aging population. To address this need, Snowdon is developing novel treatments for both acute pain and neuropathic pain. Snowdon’s leading preclinical candidates, SND-223 and SND-225, are very safe and have demonstrated positive results in mice as treatments for neuropathic pain. Clinical trials in humans are anticipated to begin in 2011. [more]

Neurological Disorders
Substantial evidence confirms that many neurological and psychiatric disorders, including psychosis, schizophrenia, autism, epilepsy, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), drug addiction, and possibly even Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease, can be treated by regulating the excessive transmission of signals between neurons that characterizes these ailments. Snowdon is developing novel medical treatments that work by this principle, and has discovered novel molecules that show encouraging results in laboratory studies. [more]

Infectious Diseases
Infectious diseases usually occur by natural causes, but there is growing awareness that infectious agents can be spread through deliberate efforts as acts of terrorism. Both routes of infection represent major threats to our national security and to global health and stability. Snowdon is actively pursuing discovery-stage research on SND-159 and SND-121 as novel treatments for common infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and toxoplasmosis as well as medical countermeasures for infectious agents more likely spread deliberately by acts of bioterrorism. [more]