As some others on here, I have tried every means known to me to contact Prof. Tzounopoulos and his team, but he will not answer a very specific question, which I feel is in our interests.
As a world leader in tinnitus research, particularly as regards the reformulation of Trobalt, and the effect of the Kv7.2 channels on tinnitus, what are his thoughts on a drug such as XEN1101 being an effective treatment for tinnitus?
Some feel it is irrelevant what he thinks, but as for me, I really would like his opinion on this.
In fact, the whole logical side of me can see a potential for a collaboration here. A small team full of tinnitus specific researchers allied with a large corporation with $800M in cash, that do not want to focus on tinnitus at present.
It's as easy as this. Department of Defense, Pittsburgh Hearing Research Center and Xenon Pharmaceuticals run a proof of concept trial with XEN1101 as the lead candidate. This could be a small Phase 1 trial with 20-40 participants and be run by Pittsburgh, funded by DoD, with Xenon Pharmaceuticals the commercial partner. It this not just logical?
If results are positive, then a larger Phase 2 could be run, and also we could have off label prescribing until the data from this Phase 2 are in. In the meantime, Pittsburgh could still continue work on RL-81 if needed.
As for clinical trials, Prof. Tzounopoulos is STILL pre clinical. He would need to do 3 trials to get a treatment to market. This takes an average of 9 years, from IND to NDA and commercialisation. He would also need to partner with a larger corporation just like Frequency Therapeutics was a spin off from Langer Labs at MIT.
I don't know what age the Professor is but at a guess he is maybe late 40s and perhaps early 50s. The chances of him bringing a treatment out during his career at this pace are unlikely.
I guess a lot of 'academics' just like research. That is their game.
More research papers are useful, but I don't think any amount of typed words is ever going to reduce our tinnitus.
What we need is action.