As a group of pre­clin­i­cal biotechs fo­cused on pro­tein degra­da­tion steadi­ly gath­ers steam, Ab­b­Vie is jump­ing on the band­wag­on al­beit steer­ing it to a some­what sur­pris­ing di­rec­tion: Alzheimer’s and Parkin­son’s dis­eases.

Mis­sion Ther­a­peu­tics, its cho­sen part­ner, has been con­cen­trat­ing much of its ef­forts on hit­ting USP30 and USP10 — two of over 100 deu­biq­ui­ty­lat­ing en­zymes, or DUBs, in the hu­man body that col­lec­tive­ly serve as a nat­ur­al “garbage dis­pos­al” sys­tem for cells — with one USP30 pro­gram in Parkin­son’s and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion. Ab­b­Vie, though, is more in­ter­est­ed in iden­ti­fy­ing new DUB tar­gets and get­ting Mis­sion’s dis­cov­ery plat­form to churn out be­spoke com­pounds.

Anker Lun­demose

The col­lab­o­ra­tion cov­ers ex­clu­sive rights to up to four se­lect­ed tar­gets — each to come with its own up­front li­cense fee and mile­stones for the Cam­bridge, UK-based biotech — if Ab­b­Vie ex­er­cis­es its op­tion. Fi­nan­cial terms were kept un­der wraps.

The the­o­ry is that by elim­i­nat­ing and pre­vent­ing the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of mis­fold­ed, tox­ic pro­teins — the hall­marks of both Alzheimer’s and Parkin­son’s — they can ad­dress the func­tion im­pair­ment and brain nerve cell deaths that come with the dis­eases.

Two of these pro­teins, tau and amy­loid be­ta, re­main the two key tar­gets in Alzheimer’s, even af­ter a se­ries of ma­jor set­backs in the field raise fresh ques­tions about how much we know and don’t know about this dev­as­tat­ing dis­eases.

While this marks the first ma­jor pact for Mis­sion in its sev­en years ac­cord­ing to CEO Anker Lun­demose, it’s one of sev­er­al ear­ly bets for Ab­b­Vie, which in Feb­ru­ary had al­so hand­ed Voy­ager Ther­a­peu­tics $69 mil­lion to pur­sue a gene ther­a­py ap­proach to Alzheimer’s.

Mis­sion’s peers in the pro­tein degra­da­tion field, mean­while, are main­ly fo­cused on on­col­o­gy, from C4 Ther­a­peu­tics, Arv­inas to Kymera, which raised $65 mil­lion just days ago.

The Federal Trade Commission has gotten involved in a patent feud over Supernus’ Parkinson’s drug Apokyn, a case the agency said may have ‘‘significant implications” for patients who rely on the drug.

Sage Chemical won the first generic approval for its Apokyn formulation (also known as apomorphine hydrochloride injection) back in 2022. The non-ergoline dopamine agonist is approved to treat Parkinson’s symptoms during “off episodes,” such as difficulty moving, tremors and intense cramping. However, regulators specified that the approval pertained to the generic drug cartridges only, not the injector pen required for administration.

The White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) last year sought to find ways to better coordinate large-scale clinical trials in the US — as the UK lead by example during the pandemic — especially for these emergency clinical trials.

The lobbying group PhRMA Tuesday called for more clinical trial diversity in underserved areas, including by making participation less of a burden, and expanding eligibility criteria when appropriate.

The FDA on Tuesday released a warning letter sent earlier this month to the Mason, OH-based site of Procter & Gamble Manufactura, raising questions about the list of ingredients on the label and in the electronic filing.

The warning says that for P&G’s over-the-counter Vicks Nyquil Severe Hot Remedy Cold and Flu Plus Congestion, there’s a “mismatched” list of active ingredients between the labeling and the electronic listing file. The listing file for the active ingredients did not match the active ingredients in the electronic file.