Neurodegenerative disease

The report comes just two days after Novartis announced its own Parkinson’s drug failure.
Even as Biogen and Eisai’s Leqembi and Eli Lilly’s Kisunla slowly roll out onto the market, experts question the efficacy of these anti-amyloid antibodies and the amyloid hypothesis overall.
GSK, Gilead and Arcellx, Vertex and more present new data at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting just as sickle cell therapies Casgevy and Lyfgenia have a new outcomes-based payment model; Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk pump new funds into manufacturing; and AbbVie makes a Cerevel comeback while uniQure clears a path toward accelerated approval in Huntington’s disease.
In a Type B meeting, the FDA signified that it will allow uniQure to use a natural history control, the composite Unified Huntington’s Disease Rating Scale, and neurofilament light chain levels to support the accelerated approval of its gene therapy AMT-130.
Tavapadon improved motor and daily living complications at week 26. The news comes nearly one month to the day after AbbVie announced the Phase II failure of another key Cerevel asset, emraclidine.
The Muna partnership will give GSK access to Muna’s MiND-MAP platform, which it will apply to postmortem brain samples to identify potential therapeutic targets for Alzheimer’s disease.
Novartis, Gilead, Roche and Takeda commit to new partners in a spate of mid-sized collaborations this week. Meanwhile, Applied Therapeutics’ stock tanks 80% after govorestat is denied approval, Intra-Cellular Therapies seeks to expand Caplyta into major depressive disorder and the FDA investigates the safety of bluebird bio’s Skysona.
Monday’s agreement comes days after PTC discontinued the development of another asset, utreloxastat, due to disappointing Phase II data in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.
Despite the “unfortunate” failure, William Blair analysts do not believe that the utreloxastat readout will heavily affect PTC, instead postulating that the upcoming FDA decision on its phenylketonuria candidate sepiapterin will be a stronger driver of the biotech’s stock.
Alector is kicking off a resource realignment effort that will include a workforce reduction. The biotech expects its current cash position to last it through 2026.
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