United Neuroscience, Ltd., (UNS),a clinical-stage biotech company, has signed a collaboration agreement with the Center for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center to identify distinct pathogenic species of tau protein and evaluate promising therapeutic vaccine candidates to contribute to therapies for Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases. As part of the collaboration, the Center for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases will test United Neuroscience Endobody vaccine candidates using human postmortem tissue samples and preclinical models of neurodegenerative disease.
"We are committed to applying our Endobody technology in areas of great potential impact and working with researchers who are best positioned to accelerate development of therapeutics," stated Mei Mei Hu, chief executive officer of UNS. "It takes a many minds, a team, an ecosystem, to beat a disease as Alzheimer's. Working with leading researchers as Marc Diamond at The Center for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases at UT Southwestern will provide important data as we expand our clinical pipeline to include tau protein as a mechanistic target."
"UNS's innovative technology and the clinical progress they have demonstrated are very encouraging. We are very excited to use new ideas about tau structure to design therapies more rationally," added Marc Diamond, M.D., Director of the Center for Alzheimer's and Neurodegenerative Diseases at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. "This is a unique opportunity to link fundamental structural biology, biochemistry and vaccine design to speed the development of innovative treatments."
"Finding the correct protein target is a key step in finding solutions for neurodegenerative disease," commented Ajay Verma, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer of UNS. "We are fortunate to work with leaders in the field of research in understanding tau pathology. Because of the potential for our technology to develop combination vaccines to multiple specific protein epitopes, we are particularly interested in exploring the role of tau-targeted therapeutics as a complementary mechanism to additional therapeutics in development such as our UB-311 program in Alzheimer's disease."
United Neuroscience (UNS) is a clinical-stage biotech company dedicated to the development of best-in-class immunotherapeutics for the brain.