Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience published the study results of Cortene Inc’s investigational drug CT38 in people with ME/CFS. The trial was conducted at Bateman Horne Center and Suzanne Vernon, PhD, wrote a blog post providing context about the study.

Cortene Inc. owns the intellectual property of CT38 and it’s future use. We reached out to the company to obtain further clarification regarding questions from the ME/CFS community. Here is their response:

Reason For 14 Trial Participants

InTiME was a small proof-of-concept trial investigating the safety and efficacy of CT38 in ME/CFS patients. The primary reason for small numbers was that we were budget constrained. However, even with small numbers, provided plasma concentrations remained below 0.25 ng/ml, CT38 was associated with dose- and severity-dependent efficacy (with patients being blind to dose and relative severity). This is highly encouraging and supports the hypothesis that CRFR2 is upregulated in ME/CFS and is amenable to downregulation using an agonist, like CT38 (importantly, at low concentrations). We now need to replicate these findings in a larger study.

Intended Plans for ME/CFS and Long COVID Research

We are raising the money to do the larger trial.  We plan to conduct this trial in ME/CFS, and may add a second indication (e.g., fibromyalgia). We believe long-covid is ME/CFS by a different name, and our hypothesis accommodates both the similarities and the differences (to ME/CFS).  We would like to do a separate study in long-covid, mostly because the progression, and its duration, are not as well characterized as in ME/CFS. This is a fluid situation, and these plans may change, but it is important to note that ME/CFS remains our prime focus.