Johanna Fäling
BioArctic Neuroscience AB
Sweden
Alpha-synuclein Immunotherapy for Parkinson´s disease
VINNOVA
544,070
01-09-2015
2
Parkinson's disease & PD-related disorders
Parkinson´s disease (PD) is one of the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders and a disease with a significant unmet medical need. World-wide more than 4.6 million individuals over the age of 50 suffer from PD and it is estimated that the number will more than double by 2030. Today, only symptomatic therapies are available for PD and there is a huge unmet need for treatments that also slow or halt disease progression. BioArctic Neuroscience is developing a novel therapy for PD, with the potential of becoming the first treatment with an effect on the disease progression. The novel treatment concept is based on targeting neurotoxic protofibril forms of alpha-synuclein with a humanized monoclonal antibody, BAN0805. Pre-clinical proof of concept has been demonstrated in a mouse model of PD where treatment with the murine version of the antibody (mAb47) is effective in reducing PD-like pathology accompanied with significantly increased life-span of treated animals. In the proposed project, BioArctic will take BAN0805 for immunogenicity risk assessment, cell line and process development, enabling the production of BAN0805 material to be used in GLP safety testing. BAN0805 will be ready to move into a clinical phase I trial in 2017. The sales potential for BAN0805 is close to 3 billion USD and the NPV is estimated to over 3 billion USD. With support of the proposed project, leading to a process for manufacturing BAN0805, and material for safety studies, BioArctic will reach a good position in its partnering discussions for further co-development of BAN0805 for treatment of PD on a global market. The proposed project would enable BioArctic´s continued growth and development as an independent Swedish SME within the life science sector with future sales.