In down­town Low­ell, MA, tucked in­to one of the coun­try’s old­est sur­viv­ing tex­tile mill com­plex­es is a new biotech toil­ing away on next-gen CNS ther­a­pies for se­vere neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­ders. And it’s start­ing with Rett syn­drome — a rare neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal con­di­tion that al­most ex­clu­sive­ly af­fects girls.

Kathrin Mey­er

Al­cy­one Ther­a­peu­tics emerged from stealth mode Wednes­day with $23 mil­lion from RTW In­vest­ments and 12 new gene ther­a­py pro­grams in the works. The com­pa­ny was cre­at­ed last sum­mer, short­ly af­ter founder and CEO PJ Anand met Kathrin Mey­er, a prin­ci­pal in­ves­ti­ga­tor in the gene ther­a­py unit at the Abi­gail Wexn­er Re­search In­sti­tute at Na­tion­wide Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal.

“We de­cid­ed that there was so much mu­tu­al syn­er­gy,” Anand told End­points News, lead­ing them to ex­e­cute a col­lab­o­ra­tion last year.

The com­pa­ny is in pre-IND en­abling stud­ies for one of its lead can­di­dates, AC­TX-101 — a Rett syn­drome treat­ment us­ing X-re­ac­ti­va­tion tech­nol­o­gy. Its oth­er lead can­di­date, AC­TX-401, is a gene ther­a­py for spinal mus­cu­lar at­ro­phy with res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress type 1 (SMARD1), for which it will file an IND this year.

Re­searchers at the Bay­lor Col­lege of Med­i­cine iden­ti­fied mu­ta­tions in a gene called MECP2 as the cause of Rett syn­drome back in 1999. The dis­or­der caus­es se­vere im­pair­ments that af­fect a child’s abil­i­ty to speak, walk, eat and breathe eas­i­ly, a com­mon sign be­ing con­stant repet­i­tive hand move­ments. The chal­lenge with con­ven­tion­al trans­gene re­place­ment, Anand ex­plained, is that over­pro­duc­tion of MECP2 is just as bad as un­der­pro­duc­tion.

“It is one of those Goldilocks in­di­ca­tions where you want to have the right amount of pro­tein,” he said. “The po­ten­tial of this plat­form is to in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy of gene ther­a­py not by 1 time or 2 times, but by mul­ti­ple times.”

Al­cy­one is cou­pling its pre­cise CNS de­liv­ery plat­form with X-chro­mo­some re­ac­ti­va­tion tech­nol­o­gy, so in­stead of just re­plac­ing the gene in the ac­tive X-chro­mo­some (and risk­ing over­ex­pres­sion of MECP2), they’re se­lec­tive­ly re­ac­ti­vat­ing ar­eas in the in­ac­tive X-chro­mo­some to get MECP2 pro­duc­tion.

Anand has big plans to make this pro­gram a “pipeline in a prod­uct,” where the same gene prod­uct can be ap­plied to oth­er X-chro­mo­some-re­lat­ed syn­dromes. Pri­or to this, he found­ed Anun­cia, a spin­off look­ing to treat hy­dro­cephalus and cere­brospinal flu­id dys­func­tions, and co-found­ed the med­ical de­vice com­pa­ny Arthrome­da.

Al­cy­one’s join­ing a host of oth­er com­pa­nies on the hunt for the first Rett syn­drome ther­a­py, in­clud­ing New York biotech Anavex, which got fast track sta­tus for its blar­came­sine back in 2020. Aca­dia Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, mak­er of the Parkin­son’s dis­ease drug Nu­plazid, en­tered its trofine­tide in a piv­otal Phase III study for Rett syn­drome in late 2019. Newron Phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals dropped out of the race last May, culling its Rett syn­drome pro­gram af­ter sari­zotan failed a Phase II/III tri­al.

The 35-per­son team at Al­cy­one is al­so de­vel­op­ing can­di­dates us­ing con­ven­tion­al trans­gene re­place­ment, vec­tor­ized ex­on skip­ping and pro­mo­tor mod­u­la­tion.

“Our next-gen­er­a­tion pre­ci­sion de­liv­ery plat­form shows strong po­ten­tial in over­com­ing the fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge in CNS ther­a­py de­vel­op­ment,” Anand said.

Cor­rec­tion: Al­cy­one plans on fil­ing an IND this year for AC­TX-401, not AC­TX-101. 

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If they hold up in a second, identical trial, the data pave the way for Dupixent to become the first biologic to treat patients whose COPD remains uncontrolled despite being on maximal standard-of-care inhaled therapy — the patient population studied in the pivotal program. The companies had spotlighted this as a key readout as they look to expand the Dupixent franchise and explore its full potential.

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Retifanlimab, marketed as Zynyz, was approved for metastatic or recurrent locally advanced Merkel cell carcinoma (MCC), a fast-growing skin cancer typically characterized by a single, painless nodule. It’s roughly 40 times rarer than melanoma, according to the nonprofit Skin Cancer Foundation — but incidence is growing, particularly among older adults, Incyte said in its announcement.