Neumora Therapeutics Inc., a neuroscience startup aiming to launch precision medicines for brain diseases, said Oct. 7 it has raised more than $500 million, including a $100 million equity investment from Amgen Inc. and a series A financing led by Arch Venture Partners. The company launches with a portfolio of eight clinical, preclinical and discovery-stage programs from internal discovery efforts, the acquisitions of multiple private companies and a new license agreement with Amgen.
Even though the U.S. already has a National Plan to Address Alzheimer’s Disease, a bipartisan group of U.S. senators is adding its voice to that of nearly 200 national organizations and experts in calling for more.
Privately held Retrotope Inc., the only company currently in the clinic studying the ultra-rare and fatal neurological disorder infantile neuroaxonal dystrophy, has new data it hopes to present to the FDA early next year.
Voyager Therapeutics Inc. is getting $30 million up front in a potential $630 million gene therapy deal with Pfizer Inc., the company’s first such agreement since a strategic refocusing effort earlier this year and a much-needed endorsement of a next-generation AAV capsid platform that has shown promising though early stage data.
Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma Co. Ltd., its U.S.-based subsidiary Sunovion Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. have inked a global collaboration agreement to jointly advance four new compounds for serious neuropsychiatric conditions. Sunovion granted Otsuka rights to collaboratively develop and commercialize the four compounds worldwide. In return, Sunovion will receive an up-front payment of $270 million and up to $620 million in development milestone payments for the agents, with the potential for more depending on additional indications. It could also receive sales milestones from Otsuka.
"My fondest hope is that maybe depression and other mental health disorders may be diagnosed by underlying cause, rather than categorized dualistically," Edward Bullmore, director of the Wolfson Brain Imaging Centre, and head of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, told his audience at the European Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP). "I think it's much more aligned with the way that the rest of medicine has been working for some time."
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded Oct. 4 to David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian “for their discoveries of receptors for temperature and touch.”
With the FDA approval of Abbvie Inc.’s Qulipta (atogepant) to prevent episodic migraine in adults, the oral calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP) receptor antagonist became the first specifically developed for preventing migraine.
Expansion Therapeutics Inc., a company developing new drugs for severe RNA-mediated diseases based on the work of its scientific founder, Scripps Research chemistry professor Matthew Disney, has raised $80 million in a series B financing to identify and advance oral small-molecule candidates for the potential treatment of myotonic dystrophy type 1, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and tauopathies.
With new therapeutics under FDA review for migraine, Alzheimer’s disease and seizures, and several rare disease gene therapies in development, stocks included in BioWorld’s Neurological Diseases Index are tracking 6.09% ahead for the year.
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