Neurodegenerative Disorders

Many neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, share common pathological features: the misfolding and aggregation of key proteins. Under normal circumstances, cellular mechanisms efficiently degrade these proteins into their components for recycling. However, in some cases the misfolding leads to protein aggregation, which can then lead into an aggregation cascade that is self-propagating.

TauRx is researching treatments that have the potential to modify the disease course in conditions that involve protein aggregation pathology. We are investigating a class of drugs known as Tau Aggregation Inhibitors (TAIs), which interfere with the abnormal aggregation process and formation of tau tangles. Tau aggregates are thought to be particularly toxic to nerve cells. To our knowledge, no company has a TAI in late-stage clinical developments.

Our protein aggregation inhibitors have the potential to target proteins in the following neurodegenerative conditions:

• Alzheimer’s disease (tau)
• Behavioural variant frontotemporal dementia or bvFTD (tau and TDP-43)
• Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (tau)
• Progressive supranuclear palsy (tau)
• Cortico-basal degeneration (tau)
• Parkinson’s disease (synuclein)
• Huntington’s disease (huntingtin and tau)
• Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (TDP43)