Cantabio Pharmaceuticals Inc. has been awarded a grant by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to support the development of a cell-penetrant DJ-1 protein replacement therapeutic candidate for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease.

Halia Therapeutics Inc. and Canary Speech Inc. have established a collaboration in Alzheimer’s disease.

At the ongoing WORLDSymposium meeting in San Diego, Gain Therapeutics Inc. presented preclinical data on the company’s GCase enhancer GT-02287 as a potential approach to rescue motor function in Parkinson’s disease (PD).

In a first, the U.S. FDA accepted an artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning-model into its Innovative Science and Technology Approaches for New Drugs (ISTAND) pilot program for drug development. The program will support use of Deliberate AI Inc.’s anxiety and depression assessment tool, called the AI-generated Clinical Outcome Assessment (AI-COA), as a qualified drug development tool.

Researchers from Lanzhou University have described the discovery and preclinical evaluation of new multifunctional opioid agonists being developed as potential antinociceptive agents.

Researchers from Texas A&M University System have detailed the development and characterization of a novel pediatric rat model of organophosphate (OP)-induced status epilepticus (SE).

Encoded Therapeutics Inc. is advancing its lead gene therapy candidate, ETX-101, for the treatment of SCN1A+ Dravet syndrome into the clinic.

It is well known that protein tau forms aggregates in the brain in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD) that are also known as tauopathies. Accumulation of protein tau in the brain leads to the cell toxicity and promotes the loss of synaptic plasticity, which in turn causes memory loss. As reported on Feb. 1, 2024, in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, assistant professor Tara Tracy and her research team from the Buck Institute for Research on Aging have discovered a protein in the brain that could restore this damage induced by protein tau.

A partnership between Gate Neurosciences Inc. and Beacon Biosignals Inc. promises to advance the field of precision psychiatry by using electroencephalogram (EEG) biomarkers to diagnose depression and rapidly assess response to medications. The collaboration will first use Beacon’s U.S. FDA-cleared Dreem 3S headband device and neurobiomarker platform to conduct EEGs in participants in Gate’s phase II trial of zelquistinel, a small-molecule NMDA receptor modulator under development as an antidepressant.