Roche no longer wanted them, but now four small molecule CNS drugs which the Swiss pharma dropped 12 months ago will re-enter clinical development under licence by start-up biotech, Newleos, which was launched this week. One of the founders, and now Chief Medical Officer at Newleos, previously led clinical development in the Neuroscience and Rare Disease division at Roche, with emphasis in the area of neurodevelopmental disorders.
One of the four drugs, basmisanil, will be tested in treating cognitive impairment in rare-neurodevelopmental indications, including Dup15q11 syndrome in which it was being tested in Phase 2 prior to Roche’s termination of the program.
Similar to Angelman syndrome and Prader-Willi syndrome, there is a Chromosone 15 abnormality in Dup15q syndrome. The prevalence of the disorder in the general population is estimated to be about 1 in 14,000 people. I believe that there is a real chance that Dup15q may be one of the further indications that Neuren has selected for NNZ-2591.
Newleos managed to raise US$93.5m in an oversubscribed Series A financing which was heavily backed by Goldman Sachs. Novo Nordisk’s parent company was also one of the participants. The transaction was said to position Goldman Sachs to potentially capture value from the growing mental health market and the broader trend of pharmaceutical companies increasingly sourcing innovation through biotech acquisitions.
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