Our therapeutic focus
At least 50 deadly ageing-related diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes, Parkinson's, and many rare degenerative diseases, are now associated with abnormal protein misfolding and aggregation:
- Alzheimer's disease (AD)
- Type II diabetes (T2D)
- Parkinson's disease (PD)
- Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
- Huntington's disease (HD)
- Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD)
- Dialysis-related amyloidosis (DRA)
- Frontotemporal dementia (FTD)
- Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP)
- Chronic traum. encephalopathy (CTE)
- Parkinson's disease dementia (PDD)
- Dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB)
- Multiple system atrophy (MSA)
- Senile systemic amyloidosis (SSA)
- Familial amyloid polyneuropathy (FAP)
- Many other degenerative diseases
In every one of these diseases, a specific protein or peptide aggregates in a particular part of the brain or body to form toxic soluble oligomers or amyloid pores that puncture holes in cell membranes, causing uncontrolled calcium influx, aberrant cell signalling, loss of homeostasis, oxidative stress, inflammation, and progressive cell death and degeneration.
Together, these diseases affect over half a billion people and kill nearly 4 million people around the world each year, at a total cost to society of 3 trillion dollars a year, or roughly 3.5% of global GDP.
Currently, there are no effective disease-modifying treatments that can stop or delay the underlying process of degeneration, so patients face years of progressive decline, with increasing need for full-time care until they die.
Meanwhile, the social and economic burden of these diseases is growing rapidly with the ageing population, and global healthcare systems face potential collapse unless effective disease-modifying treatments are developed right now.
