Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals Secures $750,000 Grant to Advance Novel Alzheimer’s Therapy Targeting Pathological Tau
VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat) has learned that on January 17, 2019, Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals announced it had secured $750,000 in funding from the Tau Pipeline Enabling Program (T-PEP) to advance the development of a novel therapy for Alzheimer’s disease.
Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals is a leading company in the field of stress granule biology, dedicated to the research and development of therapeutics that modulate stress granules in neurodegenerative diseases. The company secured $5 million and $10 million in venture capital financing in 2015 and 2017, respectively, and received $3.4 million in funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2018. These funds have enabled Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals to achieve significant breakthroughs in the pathological research of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals focuses on Alzheimer’s disease, a slowly progressing neurodegenerative disorder that worsens over time. As of 2015, approximately 29.8 million people worldwide were affected by Alzheimer’s disease, resulting in about 1.9 million deaths. The exact cause of Alzheimer’s disease remains unknown. Various hypotheses exist within the industry regarding its etiology, with mainstream theories including genetic inheritance, the cholinergic hypothesis, the amyloid-beta peptide hypothesis, and the tau protein hypothesis. Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals’ approach of reducing pathological tau protein in the brain is based on the tau protein hypothesis.
Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals Official Website Page
Tau protein is a microtubule-associated protein that is commonly found in neurons of the central nervous system but rarely in other cell types, with very low expression levels also observed in astrocytes and oligodendrocytes of the central nervous system. It is widely believed in the field that when Tau protein becomes defective and fails to stabilize microtubules normally, it leads to neurological disorders and dementia, such as Alzheimer’s disease.
Dr. Glenn Larsen, President and Chief Executive Officer of Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals, stated, “Building on the pioneering work of our co-founder, Dr. Ben Wolozin, we identified that modulating stress granules in the brain represents a novel approach to reducing pathological tau protein. Preclinical studies have demonstrated that this approach extends lifespan in mice and helps preserve neuronal integrity and memory. The company has now developed neural models to recapitulate the pathology of human tau-associated stress granules. With financial support, we are screening a chemical library comprising more than 250,000 small molecules to identify candidates with the potential to be developed into new therapeutics. Our findings hold promise for application across multiple neurodegenerative diseases, offering hope to millions of individuals suffering from these conditions.”
The Tau Pipeline Enabling Program (T-PEP) is a grant initiative jointly launched by the Alzheimer’s Association and the Tau Consortium. It primarily targets Alzheimer’s disease (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), aiming to explore novel therapies for preventing, reducing, or even eliminating pathological tau protein in the brain. Both non-profit researchers and small for-profit companies are eligible to apply for funding. Among 125 applications, Aquinnah Pharmaceuticals was one of the five selected recipients.