Inhibikase Therapeutics Inc (Nasdaq: IKT), a US-based clinical-stage pharmaceutical company developing therapeutics to modify the course of Parkinson's disease and related disorders, announced on Thursday that it has received a USD385,388 research grant from the United States National Institute of Neurological Disease and Stroke to assess the therapeutic potential of IkT-148009, the company's lead c-Abl inhibitor, in a novel preclinical model for Multiple System Atrophy.

The grant is intended to enable Inhibikase to assess the mechanism of the Multiple System Atrophy disease process in a novel rodent model to determine if the product could have the same therapeutic impact on the disease process as it has in models of Parkinson's disease.

The product is a selective c-Abl kinase inhibitor that inhibits c-Abl and the closely related Abl2/Arg enzyme without inhibition of other members of the Abl-kinase family called c-Kit or PDGFRa/b. It has around 20 times the potency of the anticancer agent Imatinib against c-Abl in enzyme inhibition assays.