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Voyager Therapeutics Presents New Data Supporting Tau Antibody Program for Alzheimer’s Disease and GBA1 Gene Therapy Program for Parkinson’s Disease at the AD/PD™ Conference
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 28, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Voyager Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: VYGR), a biotechnology company dedicated to breaking through barriers
About this update from Voyager Therapeutics, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 28, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Voyager Therapeutics, Inc. (Nasdaq: VYGR), a biotechnology company dedicated to breaking through barriers in gene therapy and neurology, today presented new data from its anti-tau antibody program for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and from its GBA1 gene therapy program for Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other GBA1-mediated diseases at the AD/PD™ Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden. “Voyager continues to advance multiple programs towards the clinic. For our anti-tau antibody program for Alzheimer’s disease, these new preclinical data support our recent selection of VY-TAU01 as the lead development candidate, with an IND filing expected in the first half of 2024,” said Todd Carter, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Voyager. “For our GBA1 gene therapy program with Neurocrine for Parkinson’s disease, these new data from a GBA1 loss of function mouse model show effects of three GBA1 gene therapy candidates on multiple endpoints.” Selection of an Anti-tau Antibody Candidate Targeting Pathological Tau for the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease (Wencheng Liu, Poster P0643 / #1192) Tau pathology, and specifically the neuron-to-neuron transmission of pathologic tau, is hypothesized to contribute to cognitive decline and neurodegeneration in AD. Voyager is advancing an anti-tau antibody that blocks pathologic tau spreading for the treatment of AD.Through multiple immunization campaigns that resulted in a pool of 728 candidates, Voyager identified four novel antibodies that met criteria regarding selectivity, affinity, functional inhibition of pathologic tau in vitro and in vivo, and developability. Three of these antibodies target the same epitope on the C-terminal domain of tau, while one antibody targets the mid-domain; all four are differentiated from N-terminal targeted approaches that have previously failed in clinical trials. All four Voyager antibodies demonstrated robust preclinical efficacy in blocking the spread of pathological tau in a P301S seeding-propagation tauopathy mouse model. Ab01 demonstrated superior efficacy (>70% reduction in tau pathology, as presented at AAIC 2022), while N-terminal antibodies typically lack efficacy in this model.Ab01 was humanized. After analysis of multiple humanized Ab01 variants, Voyager selected VY-TAU01 as the development candidate based on a number ...