De­nali launch­es a clin­i­cal quest on Alzheimer’s drug, bank­ing $155M in Take­da cash and scor­ing mon­key da­ta on BACE

Af­ter all the set­backs and fail­ures we’ve seen in Alzheimer’s re­search over the past 15 years, can a start­up boast­ing bet­ter tech­nol­o­gy beat the ter­ri­ble odds against them and score with a new drug?

We’re at the ear­ly stages of get­ting an an­swer to that ques­tion.

De­nali $DNLI an­nounced to­day that it is now try­ing just that, launch­ing a Phase I clin­i­cal study of its Alzheimer’s drug DNL747, its small mol­e­cule in­hibitor for RIPK1. It’s al­so start­ed a sec­ond hu­man study of its LRRK2 in­hibitor for Parkin­son’s dis­ease, which is its lead in­di­ca­tion. And the South San Fran­cis­co biotech re­port­ed that it’s banked a $155 mil­lion up­front from Take­da’s bil­lion-dol­lar part­ner­ship while scor­ing pos­i­tive ear­ly re­sults from a study in­volv­ing mon­keys for BACE1 — a mech­a­nism in Alzheimer’s that re­cent­ly failed de­ci­sive­ly for Mer­ck in Phase III.

Unlock this article instantly by becoming a free subscriber.

You’ll get access to free articles each month, plus you can customize what newsletters get delivered to your inbox each week, including breaking news.

SIGN UP LOG IN BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER