MeiraGTx and Hologen Put AI at the Heart of $200m Parkinsons Gene Therapy Collaboration
Joint venture aims to transform CNS drug discovery and development in deal worth up to $430m as Hologen AI steps out of the shadows.
Gene therapy company MeiraGTx has entered into a $200m up front multifaceted strategic partnership with Hologen Limited to form a new AI-driven drug discovery startup Hologen Neuro AI.
As part of the collaboration MeiraGTx could receive an additional $230m. The extra money will be used to push MeiraGTx’s phase II Parkinson’s disease gene therapy, AAV-GAD, all the way to commercialisation – as well as advancing other earlier-stage products including AAV-BDNF for genetic obesity.
The deal has been structured so that MeiraGTx will also receive a 30% stake in Hologen Neuro AI and be responsible for all clinical development and manufacturing in the joint venture. In turn Hologen will take a minority stake in and contribute to the funding of MeiraGTx’s manufacturing subsidiary, which has sites in the UK and Ireland.
Yesterday, Hologen and MeiraGTx said that the startup represented the first ever neuro-AI clinical drug development company and would “transform the discovery and development of therapies targeting CNS circuitry in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders”.
These claims are predicated on Hologen using its generative AI capabilities to both boost the effectiveness of MeiraGTx’s manufacturing capabilities and apply its multi-modal generative foundation models on MeiraGTx’s clinical data to characterise disease modification in the CNS.
MeiraGTx said it was already taking advantage of Hologen’s generative AI capabilities with CEO Alexandria Forbes, stating that Hologen’s technology had “significantly de-risked” its plans for phase III trials of AAV-GAD following its application to MeiraGTx’s phase II data sets.
Forbes added that the technology had also identified disease modifying changes in the physiology of the brain in response to AAV-GAD treatment. Gene therapy AAV-GAD is set to enter phase III trials in mid-2025.
Shares in MeiraGTx rose almost 30% yesterday on the news of the AI collaboration, adding to the good news for the gene therapy group, which included a $30m equity investment from Sanofi in August and positive phase I data for its retinal dystrophy gene therapy drug AAV-AIPL1.
For Hologen, the formation of Hologen Neuro AI is one of the first public moves by the privately-held company whose team includes ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Pierre-François Filet, the co-founder and former CEO of QuantHouse, a financial data provider. Until now there had been little news from the startup that claims University College London and Kings College London among its co-founding institutions.
The group, which has stated a preference for projects related to the brain, wants to use its large medicine models (LMMs) to enhance drug development “by uncovering hidden treatment effects that are often missed owing to biological complexity”.
Hologen has also expressed a preference for working in late-stage drug development. This inclination for more mature assets could ensure that the projects the group is interested in are relatively derisked, as well as having sufficient data for Hologen to use its LMMs.
Hologen and MeiraGTx expect the transaction to close within the next four months.
