Neurodegenerative disease
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.
While taldefgrobep alfa failed to show improved motor function in spinal muscular atrophy, treated patients saw a marked reduction in body fat. Biohaven plans to launch a Phase II trial in obesity by the end of the year.
Cassava Sciences has revealed the late-stage clinical failure of controversial Alzheimer’s drug simulfilam. The company had pledged to share the results whether “good, bad or ambiguous.”
Sage Therapeutics discontinued development of its lead candidate dalzanemdor after a third clinical failure, leading analysts to question the biotech’s future profitability.
After previously failing studies in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, dalzanemdor’s latest stumble in Huntington’s disease has pushed Sage Therapeutics to pull the plug on the NMDA receptor modulator.
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