Despite a major setback last summer when its promising drug bapineuzumab failed in late-stage clinical trials, Janssen Pharmaceuticals is looking to beef up its Alzheimer’s disease drug pipeline in a new deal with Evotec AG.
Drug discovery company Evotec has a proprietary database of genes that are dysregulated in Alzheimer’s patients, as discovered in the analysis of human brain tissues representing various stages of disease progression, as well as control tissues. That information could fuel more insights into the molecular underpinnings of Alzheimer’s, ultimately leading to new targets and therapeutics that could stop its progression early on, the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Center said Friday. Most of the failed drug programs over the last decade have been focused on the beta-amyloid plaque and tau tangle pathways, both of which manifest later in the disease.
Through the deal, JNJ subsidiary Janssen Pharmaceuticals will pay $10 million in research costs for each drug candidate it selects from Evotec’s database. For each drug that progresses into pre-clinical and clinical development – and there’s no limit on how many that could be – Janssen could make milestone payments of up to $145 million.
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If any products are commercialized from the collaboration, Evotec would receive royalty payments. But that’s a long way off — it would take years to identify targets and advance new drug candidates through preclinical and clinical development.
This is the latest move in Janssen’s push to deliver a course-altering drug for the neurodegenerative disease that affects more than 5 million Americans. Last year, Janssen licensed an oral BACE inhibitor for Alzheimer’s from Shionogi in Japan. J&J’s venture arm also recently invested in Rodin Therapeutics, a startup formed by Atlas Ventures and biotech company Proteros developing therapies based on epigenetics.
Evotec and Janssen are already working together as part of the CureBeta collaboration focused on new treatments for diabetes.
