KalGene Pharmaceuticals secures $1.5 million in funding to develop Alzheimer's treatment with the National Research Council of Canada

Toronto, Ontario ─ Canadian biotech KalGene Pharmaceuticals has successfully secured $1.5 million in financing from Brain Canada, CQDM, and the Ontario Brain Institute (OBI) Focus on Brain program to develop a new treatment for Alzheimer's. This funding from CQDM will allow KalGene to test the conjugated therapeutic in preclinical models and if successful, in patients.

Getting therapeutics past the blood-brain barrier is no easy task. To enable its delivery into the brain, experts from the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) will couple KAL-ABP, the therapeutic molecule, to carrier molecules that can shuttle it past the barrier. The molecule, called Amyloid-binding peptide (KAL-ABP), was developed by NRC and licensed to KalGene earlier this year.

To assist with the evaluation of the therapy, the Montreal Neurological Institute is providing best-in-class human imaging, while the Centre for Imaging Technology Commercialization (CIMTEC) is developing an algorithm to automatically quantify amyloid-beta, the suspected cause of Alzheimer's disease.

Read the full NRC release on Market Wired.