Adeona Pharmaceuticals gets more grant money to continue work on multiple-sclerosis drug

Adeona Pharmaceuticals Inc. said today that it has received a grant of $409,426 from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society to help fund an ongoing Phase II U.S. Food and Drug Administration trial of Trimesta, a hormone that shows promise in reducing relapses among female patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis. The 150-patient, randomized, double-blind study is under way at 15 centers in the U.S., with 127 patients enrolled so far. Adeona (Amex: AEN), a pharmaceutical company based in Ann Arbor, licensed Trimesta from the University of California, Los Angeles. The trial previously received more than $6 million in grant funding, including $5 million from National MS Society and the society’s Southern California chapter and $860,440 from the federal government’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Adeona, which also has developed or licensed drugs to target Alzheimer’s disease, fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and age-related macular degeneration, will hold a teleconference at 4:30 p.m. Thursday to discuss earnings results for 2010 and the quarter that ended Dec. 31.