With the first wave of Alzheimer’s disease drugs reaching the market, investors continue to seek out the next big advance in this red-hot area of neuroscience R&D.
For Novo Holdings, the controlling shareholder of Novo Nordisk, this has included taking the lead on a $100 million series C funding round for Switzerland-based Asceneuron. By targeting intracellular tau, Asceneuron’s oral small molecule drug ASN51 “offers the potential for a paradigm shift” in treating Alzheimer’s, Novo Holdings’ senior partner for venture investments Naveed Siddiqi, M.D., said.
Having already shown across a series of phase 1 trials that ASN51 is taken up by the central nervous system and can impact the OGA enzyme, Asceneuron plans to use its influx of cash to take the drug into a phase 2 trial. According to the biotech’s website, the data on ASN51 to date support a daily dosing regimen in Alzheimer’s disease, with the midstage study expected to begin in the second half of this year.
Biogen and Eisai’s Alzheimer’s treatment Leqembi is currently available as an intravenous infusion, while Eli Lilly’s Kisunla has recently been approved as an injection. Asceneuron is hoping that ASN51’s “unique mode of action and convenient oral formulation” will give it an advantage over these early market entrants.
Joining Novo Holdings for the fundraise were new investors EQT Life Sciences Dementia Fund, OrbiMed and SR One, the former investment arm of GSK, along with previous backers M Ventures, Sofinnova Partners, GSK Equities Investments and Johnson & Johnson’s investment arm JJDC.
Alongside the financing, Novo Holdings’ Siddiqi, EQT’s Philip Scheltens and OrbiMed’s Dina Chaya, Ph.D., will join the biotech’s board.
“This high caliber life sciences investor syndicate further validates the potential of our OGA inhibitor pipeline and leadership in the field of tauopathies,” Asceneuron CEO Barbara Angehrn Pavik said in the July 16 release.
“We are excited to advance our lead asset ASN51 into phase 2 clinical development, recognizing its potential to significantly expand treatment options for patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” added Pavik, who joined Asceneuron as CEO in October 2023, having most recently served as Chief Business Officer at Vifor.
Asceneuron, which spun off from Merck KGaA’s Serono division in 2012, has developed another clinical-stage OGA inhibitor in the form of ASN90. Last year, Ferrer secured the rights to develop ASN90 for a tau-related disease called progressive supranuclear palsy.
As well as potentially slowing the progression of Alzheimer’s by preventing the aggregation of tau proteins, Asceneuron said that inhibiting the OGA enzyme has also shown promise in preventing the aggregation of proteins linked to other neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.