NEW YORK – The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation has invested roughly $4.4 million in Aprinoia Therapeutics' efforts to develop drugs and diagnostics for neurodegenerative diseases.
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biopharmaceutical firm on Monday said it will use the funds to test the ability of its tau PET tracer 18F-APN-1607 to diagnose progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) and related tauopathies in a pivotal Phase III trial. An accumulation of misfolded tau tangles in the brain is believed to be a pathological hallmark of numerous neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and PSP.
The funding will also allow Aprinoia to screen its library of preclinical small molecule candidates that target and degrade pathogenic tau proteins inside of brain cells and select a lead candidate for investigational new drug application-enabling studies by next year.
"This funding will further enable us to advance these critical programs toward their respective milestones," Aprinoia Chief Medical Officer Bradford Navia said in a statement. "By combining highly selective diagnostics and therapeutics, we believe that precision medicine, which has transformed the diagnosis and treatment of cancer, may finally be realized for neurological disorders."