Has any one fired off an email to this chap in regards to the drugs potential use for tinnitus?
Yes, mailed the CEO of 1st Order Pharmaceuticals. He responded with a very interesting mail:
"Thank you for the email inquiry about 1OP-2198 and its potential use in tinnitus. I did a little research and found the tinnitus talk website where 1OP-2198 was discussed. You should also know that I was part of the team that shepherd Potiga(ezogabine) through NDA approval at the FDA into the US marketplace. I've also read the conversations on tinnitus talk about individual's experience with Potiga in self medicating their tinnitus to varying degrees of success.
There are many challenges in gaining approval of a treatment for tinnitus and that animal models (such as the one that demonstrated effectiveness in a rat for SF0034) do not always translate to clinical efficacy. However, they are a very good as a first Proof-of-Concept. There is a lot of interest in the research community about potassium channels being valid targets in treating tinnitus and I was disappointed with Autifony's failed clinical trial.
Right now, the focus is to advance 1OP-2198 into phase 1 clinical trials to demonstrate pharmacokinetics and tolerability after oral administration. That does not preclude us from investigating the nonclinical potential in other animal models orthogonal to epilepsy.
I would appreciate any epidemiology information or natural history information you may have on tinnitus. The biggest challenge I see in designing effective clinical trials is initially defining a narrow clinical population to test a drug with well validated tools."
Upon this mail I responded with some recent insights about pre-clinical animal models for tinnitus research and referred to the potassium channel papers of Thanos Tzanoupoulos. Also asked him kindly to inform me if they decide to test this drug on tinnitus.
This was a week ago.... If I get a response I will share here!