Cut loose from Bio­gen buy­out op­tion, Rodin preps for an ear­ly-stage shot at Alzheimer’s

Af­ter qui­et­ly scrap­ping a $485 mil­lion buy­out op­tion held by Bio­gen, Cam­bridge, MA-based Rodin Ther­a­peu­tics has lined up a $27 mil­lion round to get its HDAC in­hibitor in the clin­ic with a plan for tak­ing their first clin­i­cal stab at Alzheimer’s — one of the tough­est tar­gets in biotech.

“We are plan­ning to be in the clin­ic by the end of 2018,” CEO Adam Rosen­berg tells me.

That’s a big step for a biotech which was launched sev­er­al years ago by At­las Ven­ture and Pro­teros, look­ing to build on an epi­ge­net­ics re­search strat­e­gy: restor­ing the ex­pres­sion of synap­tic genes and coun­ter­ing the cat­a­stroph­ic de­struc­tion of neu­rons in or­der to im­prove cog­ni­tion in a slate of tough neu­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions by ze­ro­ing in on HDAC com­plex­es.

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