My visit to NIH, NCATS, with Stephanie Snow Gebel, Chairman of the Board of the Snow Foundation, was quite successful. We have had multiple discussions in the past two weeks and agreed to develop novel chemical compounds (i.e., drugs) for Wolfram syndrome. We will target the endoplasmic reticulum. This will be a three-way collaboration with NCATS, Snow Foundation, and my Wolfram research team at Washington University. We are very excited by this because NCATS has a strong drug development team. They said that their mission is to develop novel treatments for rare and neglected diseases. I appreciate this opportunity, and grateful for all the people who made this possible, including Dr. Francis Collins, NIH Director, and Dr. Christopher Austin, NCATS Director. The drug development team at NCAST is so strong. I look forward to working with Dr. Ajit Jadhav, Dr. David Maloney, and Dr. Anton Simeonov. This is wonderful news to the Wolfram syndrome community. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.
With gratitude,
Fumi Urano