GSK has walked away from a $2.2 billion biobucks neurodegenerative disease pact with Alector that has seen both drugs involved flunk clinical trials.
The British Big Pharma signed off on a $700 million upfront payment to the Bay Area biotech back in 2021 to work together on a pair of therapies. Both drugs were designed to block sortilin in order to boost a protein called progranulin, which helps regulate the brain’s immune activity as well as support neurons.
The collaboration was already looking shaky last year when one of these assets, latozinemab, failed to slow disease progression in a phase 3 study of patients with a variety of frontotemporal dementia. In response, Alector said it was dropping latozinemab and halving its headcount.
More bad news followed in April of this year, when a phase 2 study of the other drug from the pact, called nivisnebart, in Alzheimer’s disease was halted after being deemed unlikely to hit its endpoint of slowing disease progression.
Analysts, who had already viewed latozinemab’s fail as casting doubt on the viability of targeting progranulin, saw the end of the nivisnebart trial as effectively ending the collaboration.
But GSK only formally terminated the agreement on Monday, Alector disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week. For the Big Pharma, it means writing off that $700 million upfront payment, while for Alector it’s an acceptance that the $1.5 billion in biobucks tied to the deal will forever remain out of reach.
Alector’s next wave of assets uses technology for crossing the blood-brain barrier. The biotech plans to file to test an anti-amyloid beta antibody that uses the technology in humans in the first quarter of next year. TD Cowen analysts have previously said that preclinical data on the technology are “initially promising,” but cautioned that clinical data “remain distant.”
GSK’s dealmaking strategy has shifted in recent months under recently appointed CEO Luke Miels, who has been explicit that he’s looking for candidates that improve on existing treatments. In practice, this has meant the $2.2 billion buyout of Rapt Therapeutics for a food allergy reaction drug that targets the same epitope as Novartis and Roche’s Xolair, as well as paying $950 million cash for Canadian biotech 35Pharma and its potential rival to Merck & Co.’s pulmonary hypertension mainstay Winrevair.
Last month, the pharma paid $10.6 billion for Nuvalent, securing two near-approval cancer therapies that could challenge products from Roche, Pfizer and other drugmakers.
Still, GSK hasn’t abandoned Alzheimer’s completely under Miels’ tenure. The company launched a five-year collaboration with The Jackson Laboratory–New York Stem Cell Foundation Collaborative in February to advance human cellular models of neurodegenerative diseases.