Collaborations - Partnerships in Alzheimer's Research
Leaders in Alzheimer’s disease research, TauRx’s focus on the tau pathology of neurodegenerative disease has generated a multi-layered portfolio of patents and patent applications which TauRx believes will permit a strong defensive intellectual property position. This consists of 836 granted patents and 120 pending, covering both product and method of use. TauRx has also filed a patent based upon high affinity tau antibodies developed with both diagnostic, and therapeutic potential.
The company’s success to date is also due to collaborations with organisations that span a variety of fields. Achieving the company’s long-term vision and commercial goals will require further alliances and TauRx is pleased to consider new partnerships with pharmaceutical companies active in the field of neurodegeneration.
The Market and Need for Progress
The emotional impact of the disease on patients and their families is uniformly devastating. For the patient there is increasing isolation and loss of emotional contact with loved ones and loss of normal personal and professional competencies. Families become consumed by the responsibilities, sacrifices, stresses, and financial burden of full-time care. The financial impact to the families and the broader community is massive and increasing.
Prevalence and Societal Impact
The increase in human lifespan tracks economic development. As the world’s population ages, the prevalence of AD is predicted to reach epidemic proportions. Alzheimer’s Disease International estimates that there are close to 50 million people currently living with AD and that this figure will continue to increase to 75 million by 2030 and to 132 million by 2050. These figures, based as they are on the clinically visible stages of disease, underestimate the global number with early stages of progressive tau pathology, which TauRx estimates to be closer to 500 million already now, with 60% of these in Asia. If left unchecked, the disease has the capability not only to devastate the lives of patients, families, and caregivers but also to have a major financial impact on public healthcare systems across the world.
The picture in the US is typical of advanced economies. The US Alzheimer’s Association states that aggregate health care payments, including long-term and hospice care, for people with AD and other dementias are projected to increase from $290billion in 2019 to $1.1trillion in 2050. In addition, over 16 million people provide unpaid care for a person with AD or other dementias. In 2016, these people provided an estimated 18.5 billion hours of unpaid care, a contribution to the nation valued at nearly $234 billion.
Our lead compound is the first TAI to be tested in late-stage clinical trials and its Phase 3 program currently leads the field in therapeutics of pathological protein aggregation. From its completed trials, which have substantially de-risked the program, TauRx has shown conclusively that our compound has clinically meaningful pharmacological activity on brain structure and function in two distinct diseases. The ongoing Phase 3 trial aims to capitalise on what has been learned to date with the aim of bringing the first new treatment targeting pathological tau protein aggregation to market authorisation within a 3-year time horizon.
TauRx has been well-funded to date, and it will seek to exploit the full scope of its franchise by a public listing for its shares at an appropriate time and/or enter discussions regarding commercialisation opportunities for our drug with potential partners.
Should your company match the business development interests of TauRx as outlined above, please contact us.