BioWorld International Correspondent

Neurimmune Therapeutics AG, an early stage biotechnology firm specializing in developing antibody-based therapies for neurodegenerative conditions, entered an alliance on Alzheimer's disease with Biogen Idec worth up to $380 million in up-front and milestone payments. Neurimmune also would receive royalties on eventual product sales.

Neurimmune was founded 12 months ago and began operations in March. A spinout from the University of Zurich, its founders include Roger Nitsch and Christoph Hock of the university's division of psychiatry research.

Their research group published an influential study in 2003, which supported the potential of Dublin, Ireland-based Elan Corp.'s Alzheimer's treatment AN-1792. The group performed follow-up studies on a subset of patients who had participated in an unsuccessful trial of the vaccine and demonstrated that it stimulates the production of antibodies that preferentially bind amyloid beta plaques and that cognitive decline was slowed in Alzheimer's patients producing such antibodies.

The company's chairman and co-founder is Karsten Henco, a well-known serial entrepreneur and angel investor, who previously co-founded Hamburg, Germany-based Evotec AG and Venlo, the Netherlands-based Qiagen NV. Nitsch and Hock were co-founders of Evotec's now defunct spinout Evotec Neurosciences GmbH

The Biogen Idec deal involves an early stage research program focused on finding antibodies that bind to amyloid beta, the peptide that aggregates to form the amyloid plaques that are characteristic of Alzheimer's.

Zurich, Switzerland-based Neurimmune will be responsible for identifying antibodies with therapeutic potential, using its 'Reverse Translational Medicine' platform. Cambridge, Mass.-based Biogen Idec will be responsible for all development and commercialization activities.

"There's a number of companies that are following this approach," CEO Edward Stuart told BioWorld International. Neurimmune's starting point is to study populations of healthy individuals to identify factors that may prevent them from developing disease, and then to apply these insights back in the laboratory to develop novel therapeutic approaches. It has an array of proprietary tools, including in vitro assays and in vivo models, which it will employ in the research program.

The company is taking a distinctive development path, which involves the active avoidance of venture capital investment. "What we believe, especially in the current environment, is that the venture capital model is just not working. It's not structured in such a way that allows young biotechnology companies to exploit their full potential," Stuart said. "Young biotechnology companies are not given time to exploit their technology fully because pressure is put on companies to have an exit of some sort."

Neurimmune raised a seed financing round of "several million euros" from its directors and management. That, plus the cash from the Biogen Idec deal, will fund the company's expansion from its present level of nine employees to about 25 by the first quarter of next year. It aims to conclude a significant deal about every two years and, eventually, to build up a robust royalty stream. "We're not in the business of doing smaller deals that could be termed 'service' or something like that," Stuart said.