According to Andrew Gengos, president and CEO of Neuraltus, the company’s experimental drug is designed to flip a molecular switch in cells known as macrophages in the blood and microglia in the central nervous system.

“There’s a switch that it hits,” Gengos said, “that regulates these cells from an activated, inflammatory mode back to a more normal, wound-healing mode.” (For more about this phenomenon, see ALS: Not Just About Motor Neurons Anymore, in the May-June 2010 ALS Newsmagazine.)

Testing in ALS research mice has shown NP001 flips a molecular switch, turning certain immune system cells from damaging to protective.

Neuraltus is completing its mouse studies, and hopes to conduct a phase 1 safety trial of NP001 in people with ALS by fall 2010.

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