Bicycle is going to collaborate with ODDI, an organization with deep expertise in the molecular pathology of Alzheimer’s disease and CNS drug development, thus expanding its neurosciecne collaborations with Oxford University’s Oxford Drug Discovery institute.
CAMBRIDGE, England & BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Bicycle Therapeutics plc (NASDAQ: BCYC), a biotechnology company pioneering a new and differentiated class of therapeutics based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle®) technology, today announced that it will collaborate with Oxford University’s Oxford Drug Discovery Institute (ODDI) to use Bicycle® technology for the development of novel therapeutics for dementia. This expands upon the collaboration between Bicycle and the Dementia Discovery Fund, or DDF, a specialized venture capital fund focused on discovering and developing novel therapies for dementia, announced in May.
“Our goal for this collaboration with ODDI and DDF is to transform the treatment paradigm for people living with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias,” said Kevin Lee, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Bicycle. “Bicycles have been shown to be highly selective and well tolerated, and they are designed with the flexibility to vary drug payloads. We believe these features can be combined to identify a broad central nervous system (CNS) drug delivery platform to send therapeutic payloads into the brain to treat neurological diseases. We look forward to working with disease experts at ODDI, who understand the complex pathogenic disease mechanism underpinning dementia, and DDF to identify and develop a new kind of therapeutic in the fight against dementia.”
Under the terms of the agreement, Bicycle will use its novel and proprietary screening platform to identify Bicycles that bind to clinically validated dementia targets. ODDI, with its expertise in CNS disease, will then profile these Bicycles in a range of target-specific and disease-focused assays to determine their therapeutic potential. If promising lead compounds are identified, Bicycle will have rights to the development of the resulting intellectual property and, with DDF, will have the option to jointly establish a new company to develop those compounds.
“This collaboration is a natural extension of ODDI’s focus on novel targets in the dementia therapeutic area,” said Dr. John Davis, Chief Scientific Officer of ODDI. “As one of three institutes within the Alzheimer’s Research UK Drug Discovery Alliance, we understand the critical difference that collaboration between academia and industry can make in our efforts to accelerate drug discovery to bring new modalities into development. Bicycle’s platform has demonstrated the potential to deliver novel, selective and potent binders to a broad range of diverse targets, for many of which traditional small molecule approaches have not been successful. We are excited to be collaborators in this important drug discovery project.”