On a con­tin­ued hunt for Parkin­son's break­throughs, Ab­b­Vie turns to a biotech in its port­fo­lio

Two and a half years ago, Ab­b­Vie’s ven­ture arm qui­et­ly co-led a $23 mil­lion Se­ries A for Rheo­stat Ther­a­peu­tics, most­ly bet­ting on the idea of restor­ing clear­ance path­ways that are cen­tral to get­ting tox­ic sub­stances out of cells — and the sci­en­tif­ic team that promised to do it.

It’s now ze­roed in on a spe­cif­ic pro­gram to bring in­to the fold.

The biotech, which has since re­named it­self Car­away Ther­a­peu­tics, is pock­et­ing $17 mil­lion up­front to kick off a col­lab­o­ra­tion where it will com­plete the pre­clin­i­cal work and then of­fer up a slate of po­ten­tial can­di­dates for Ab­b­Vie to li­cense if they so choose. Specif­i­cal­ly, these would be ag­o­nists of TMEM175 — or trans­mem­brane pro­tein 175 — an ion chan­nel in­volved in get­ting potas­si­um out of the lyso­some, there­by main­tain­ing the right pH lev­els the or­ganelle needs to work prop­er­ly.

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