Muna Therapeutics Announces Research Alliance with GSK to Treat Alzheimer's Disease

Gunderson Dettmer represented client Muna Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on developing innovative therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases, in its research alliance with GSK to identify and validate novel drug targets for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease. The companies will explore insights from Muna's MiND-MAP platform, which applies spatial transcriptomics to brain samples from Alzheimer's disease patients, cognitively resilient individuals, healthy controls and centenarians with and without cognitive impairment.

Together, Muna and GSK will assess postmortem human brain samples with spatial transcriptomics and other approaches to identify and validate potential new drug targets. The collaboration leverages Muna's deep expertise in mapping the brain's response to pathological protein aggregates and its all-in-human platform to identify cellular mechanisms, gene networks, and molecular interactions that underlie brain resilience.

In the announcement of the collaboration, Muna Chief Executive Officer Rita Balice-Gordon, Ph.D. said, “Our agreement marks a pivotal moment in Muna's evolution and in the broader Alzheimer's research landscape. By combining GSK's commitment to breakthrough science with our MiND-MAP platform's ability to deliver novel insights into brain resilience, we aim to transform the landscape of drug discovery for neurodegenerative diseases and bring new hope to millions of patients worldwide."

The Gunderson Dettmer team was led by Tim Ehrlich and Joel Diamond.

Companies
Muna Therapeutics
GSK