Disease areas and targets

reMYND’s own Drug Discovery & Development (DDD) focuses entirely on disease-modifying treatments with the aim to decelerate – or even stop – cellular degeneration found in protein misfolding disorders, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. As such, reMYND responds to a clear unmet medical need, as all marketed treatments and the majority of the products under development world-wide are aimed to only mitigate symptoms. reMYND targets a slowdown of disease progression by at least 50%, which would be considered by clinicians as a major breakthrough in the field. Our current lead compound in PD even fully inhibits the disease progression in relevant animal models.

Alzheimer’s disease
It is estimated that there are currently 26 million people worldwide with Alzheimer’s disease. This number is expected to reach 100 million by 2050. Existing therapies are all symptomatic, whereas most ongoing developments for 'causal' remedies are on tracks that have failed up to now.

Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s Disease is the most common motor disorder, typically affecting the aged (65+) population. About 0.1% to 0.2% of the western population is a Parkinson’s patient. It is expected that the number of patients suffering from Parkinson’s disease will double in the next ten years, mirroring the aging of the population in the western world. With the exception of cell transplants and gene therapy programs there are no innovative pathways explored in this field where the last real innovation took place in the seventies.

Diabetes
Diabetes mellitus is a chronic metabolic disorder that results from a failure of the body to manage glucose levels in the blood appropriately. This is due by not producing sufficiently the hormone insulin and/or by not responding adequately to the circulating insulin. The 2008 prevalence of diabetes mellitus in the seven major markets was 8.5% (about 10 times higher than the 0.9% prevalence of Alzheimer’s Disease, and 40 times higher than Parkinson’s). The major increase however will happen in Asia and the Rest-of-World, resulting in an estimated global number of diabetics of 380 million people worldwide in 2025, an increase of over 50% in less than 20 years.

Targets
For its in house drug discovery and development project reMYND focuses on tau, α-synuclein and IAPP pathology. Misfolding and aggregation of these proteins is a key element in de etiology of Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease and Diabetes respectively.