French pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced on the 22nd (local time) that it has acquired U.S. company Vigil Neuroscience for about $470 million (approximately 650 billion won).
With this acquisition, Sanofi secured the oral drug candidate 'VG-3927,' which is a TREM2 agonist. TREM2 is a receptor protein found in myeloid cells that functions to detect damage to microglia in the central nervous system and brain.
Neuroglia are akin to support units that supply necessary substances to neurons that convey signals. Among them, microglia remove damaged cells and regulate immune responses. Due to these characteristics, they are important targets in the development of new drugs to treat degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease.
According to Vigil, VG-3927 activates the TREM2 receptor, enhances the activity, survival, and proliferation capacity of microglia, and suppresses inflammation to alleviate damage to neurons. It is currently approaching phase 2 clinical trials targeting Alzheimer's disease patients.
Earlier, Sanofi signed a technology transfer agreement worth up to 1 trillion won for ABL301, a Parkinson's disease treatment candidate from ABL Bio in 2022. ABL301 is a dual antibody candidate that employs Grabbody-B technology to help drugs pass through the blood-brain barrier.
Oxygen and nutrients travel from blood vessels to the brain, but larger proteins are blocked by endothelial cells surrounding the blood vessels, preventing them from reaching the brain. The blood-brain barrier protects the brain from foreign substances, but there has been an issue with therapeutic proteins like antibodies not being able to penetrate the brain.
Until now, Alzheimer's disease treatments have been developed to eliminate or block the abnormal accumulation of amyloid beta and tau proteins inside and outside neurons. 'Leqembi' (generic name lecanemab), co-developed by U.S. company Biogen and Japan's Eisai, received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2023, along with Eli Lilly's 'Keytruda' (donanemab), which was approved by the FDA in July last year.
Recently, therapies targeting not only amyloid beta or tau proteins but also inflammation, metabolic diseases, and microglia are being developed. Director General Mook In-hee (professor at Seoul National University College of Medicine) noted, "The effectiveness is limited because there are other causes of the abnormal protein aggregation."
Director General Mook stated, "To overcome dementia, cocktail therapy that considers various causes must emerge," adding that methods to change drug penetration pathways or increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier, as well as various therapies like immunotherapy and gene therapy, may also be forthcoming.