Medtronic plc reported that the first patient has been enrolled in the Adaptive DBS Algorithm for Personalized Therapy in Parkinson's Disease (ADAPT-PD) study its trial evaluating the safety and efficacy of adaptive deep brain stimulation (aDBS) in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). This type of stimulation is an investigational feature of the Percept PC device that could be enabled if approved.
Shares of Voyager Therapeutics Inc. and its partner, Neurocrine Biosciences Inc., fell in early trading Dec. 23 after Voyager announced an FDA clinical hold on the phase II Restore-1 trial of VY-AADC, an adeno-associated virus-based gene therapy Neurocrine is developing as NBIb-1817 for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. The trial had been paused since at least November as its data safety monitoring board reviewed MRI abnormalities in some study participants.
Prevail Therapeutics Inc. won't be prevailing on its own. Eli Lilly and Co. is acquiring the gene therapy company for $880 million up front plus an earn-out of up to $160 million if Lilly can gain regulatory approval for at least one of Prevail's drugs.
At the virtual Cell & Gene Meeting on the Mesa, panelists talked about the challenges and benefits of developing cell and gene therapies to treat chronic conditions.
TORONTO – Most doctors recognize the symptoms instantly: hand tremors, slurred speech, impaired posture and balance. What they don’t always associate with people suffering from Parkinson’s disease are hallucinations and delusions.
Biogen Inc., one the world's top neurological disease specialists, is committing to invest more than $1 billion in cash and equity in Denali Therapeutics Inc. for rights to co-develop and co-commercialize a potential therapy for Parkinson's disease (PD) and options to secure up to four more neurodegenerative disease programs from its new partner.
Bold up-fronts and even bigger milestones defined ambitious neurology deals Abbvie Inc. struck with Voyager Therapeutics Inc. in 2018 and 2019. With vectorized antibodies, they planned to target multiple indications tied to excess aggregations of tau and tragic synucleinopathies. Considerable progress was made, said Omar Khwaja, Voyager's chief medical officer. But despite millions of dollars invested in the programs, Abbvie has now decided to quit the venture, leaving Voyager to either go it alone or find a new partner in its work on the challenging indications.
Armed with intellectual property generated in the lab of Edgar Engleman at Stanford University, Tranquis Therapeutics Inc. has emerged from stealth mode through a $30 million series A round.
Two separate groups have recently shown that in mouse models, inactivation of a single gene was enough to directly convert other cell types in the brain into neurons.
Athira Pharma Inc. closed on an $85 million series B financing designed to advance its small molecule, NDX-1017, into a phase II/III trial for treating Alzheimer’s disease later this year. The company is using positive data generated last year from its phase Ia/b trial in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease as a springboard to the clinic.
