TENNIS elbow and other soft tissue injuries including damage to tendons – collectively known as tendinopathies – could be treated more quickly and cost-effectively after a University of Glasgow spinout company received a £1.3 million grant to develop a new “fast-track” treatment.
Causeway Therapeutics has developed TenoMiR, which switches off disease pathways, restoring tendon function and structure, and reducing the need for lengthy periods of physiotherapy. The company will use the new grant, from Innovate UK, to begin Phase 1 human trials in 24 patients early next year.
Tendinopathies account for between 30-50% of all sporting injuries and cost the NHS an estimated £250m per year. It is estimated that 11% of one billion people in the US and Europe will suffer from some form of tendinopathy during their lifetime.
Neal Millar, co-founder and clinical senior lecturer in orthopaedics at the Institute of Infection, Immunity and Inflammation at the University of Glasgow, is leading the trials. “Tendinopathy represents a serious unmet clinical need, with one in three GP consultations in the UK being due to soft tissue tendon disease,” he said.
Physiotherapy, the basic care for soft tissue injuries, is only effective in approximately 50% of cases,” Mr Millar pointed out, leaving the remaining patients with tendons that are weakened and painful. “Patients are also put off by the prospect of up to 20 weeks of physio so this ‘fast-track’ approach to treatment is very appealing – they want a quicker fix.”
The trials will see the TenoMiR technology – a replacement therapy – locally injected into injured tendons, with the hope it will restore the tendon to “injury-free” levels and fault-free tendon repair. Mr Millar said the new treatment had the potential to “transform patient care in this field”.
It will target conditions such as tennis elbow, shoulder injuries in swimmers, repetitive strain injury in computer users and other soft tissue injuries picked up during sport and other activities.
“The treatment process is no different to getting a steroid injection in your joint or muscle,” Mr Millar explained. “We’re not changing that – what we’re doing is injecting a different type of molecule so we’re not doing anything that will be off-putting for patients.
“We’ve been working on this for four years so we’re extremely excited to be approaching Phase 1 trials,” said Mr Millar. “Scottish Enterprise gave us £600,000 three years ago so to be at this next stage is pivotal and if successful we could possibly skip Phase 2 trials and go straight to Phase 3.
“We’ll know very early if the trials are a success and our hope is that the treatment will be available to patients in three years or four to five at the most. For drug development this is very quick.”
Dr Derek Gilchrist, co-founder and chief executive of Causeway Therapeutics said: “We believe TenoMiR is a novel regenerative therapeutic with the potential to transform the treatment of tendon disease. We’re very grateful to Innovate UK for the funding to hopefully make this possible.”
Meanwhile, Mr Millar has also been awarded a MRC New Investigator Grant worth £670,000 to explore damage mechanisms associated with human tendon disease. This is a first such award to an orthopaedic surgeon and promotes investigation of musculoskeletal soft tissue disorders.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here