CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BW HealthWire)--July 30, 2002--Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CRIS) - A recently published paper entitled "Directed Differentiation of Embryonic Stem Cells into Motor Neurons," that will appear in the August 9, 2002 issue of Cell, demonstrates that Curis' proprietary hedgehog product can induce stem cells to differentiate into motor neurons, an important implication for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Motor neurons project from the spinal cord to muscle, thereby controlling movement, and are the cells that die in certain types of degenerative disease, such as Lou Gehrig's disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS) and Spinal Muscular Atrophy.

The paper describes a method for efficiently directing the differentiation of mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells into a fully differentiated type of neuron. Dr. Thomas Jessell and his team of scientists at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, together with Dr. Jeffery Porter of Curis, carried out this validating discovery research.

The research shows that the hedgehog pathway, a key regulator of embryonic development, is required for the formation of several different classes of neurons. Among these are motor neurons and dopaminergic neurons (the class of cells that die in Parkinson's disease). Curis scientists have also identified potent and specific activators of the pathway. Recently, they have synthesized a class of orally available, small molecule activators of hedgehog signaling. The work published in Cell relied on the use of the small molecules to uniformly activate the hedgehog pathway in the ES cells and induce them to differentiate into motor neurons.

"This paper has several important implications," said Dr. Lee Rubin, Chief Scientific Officer at Curis. "First of all, as pointed out by Jessell et al., it provides a general method for stimulating differentiation of ES cells that should be useful in creating various kinds of cells, including dopaminergic and cholinergic neurons, that can be used for drug screening and, ultimately, for cell replacement therapy for neurodegenerative disease. It also highlights the usefulness of small molecule regulators of the hedgehog pathway identified at Curis. These molecules themselves have significant effects in preclinical models used to study different neural diseases and will be described shortly in a series of papers and presentations."

"This study further validates the importance of being able to precisely control signaling pathways that are important in development," said Daniel R. Passeri, President and Chief Executive Officer of Curis. "These signaling pathways continue to be important in various diseases in adults and form the foundation of the drug discovery work platform in place at Curis."

"This study expands our understanding of key signaling processes that are involved in the study of the development of nerve cells and suggests a general strategy for conversion of other types of neurons," said Dr. Thomas M. Jessell.