Swiss biopharmaceutical company AC Immune has received another grant from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research to advance the company's alpha-synuclein (a-syn) PET tracer program.
Over the last four years, AC Immune has received continuous grant support from the foundation to accelerate development of a-syn PET tracers. The goal is to develop a PET imaging tracer for clinical use that can accurately detect and monitor the progression of Parkinson's disease. An a-syn tracer also could enable and accelerate the development of Parkinson's disease therapies as a tool to measure the efficacy of drugs on the a-syn pathology in the brain.
Thus far, AC Immune's program has created multiple compounds designed to selectively bind with high-affinity to human Parkinson's brain-derived, pathological a-syn in preclinical studies. One a-syn PET tracer candidate entered clinical trials earlier this year -- also with the foundation's funding -- to image pathological a-syn in Parkinson's disease and other synucleinopathies.
