CuraSen Therapeutics is a privately funded biopharmaceutical company pursuing development of novel treatments, targeting a unique mechanism of action, that can viably treat a broad range of psychiatric and neurodegenerative symptoms along with positive impact on underlying disease progression. Targeted indications include neurogenic orthostatic hypotension, cognitive impairment and disease progression in Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease, as well as symptoms and degenerative pathology in important orphan indications such as PSP and ALS. Millions of patients, their families and caregivers are burdened by these diseases, with marginal treatment options, and the numbers continue to grow annually with the aging population.
Among the few classes of drugs approved for these diseases, most take many weeks to see efficacy, are moderately efficacious at best, are associated with serious side effects, and leave many debilitating symptoms untreated. Despite extraordinary investment in research and development of novel treatments for protein-based pathology or genetics-linked targets as a cause of these brain diseases, there is no apparent symptomatic cure or clearly disease-modifying treatment yet identified for any of them.
At CuraSen, we are rethinking the prevailing therapeutic dogma to treatment of these diseases—and advancing a concept based on restoring the key transmitter functionality that declines earliest in the degenerating brain: the loss of noradrenergic signaling across the brain driven by locus coeruleus deterioration. We are developing several treatments that directly and selectively activate key adrenergic receptors (ARs) in the brain to restore functionality to multiple cell types that control the brain’s core cognitive functions and maintain brain health to compensate for this loss of noradrenergic stimulus.
CuraSen has assembled an impressive team, deeply experienced in the neuroscience, adrenergic pharmacology, chemistry and clinical development in psychiatric and neurodegenerative disease, as well as top tier and highly committed investor backing, including New Leaf Venture Partners, Longitude Capital, abrdn funds, Intermediate Capital Group (ICG), Alta Partners, Johnson & Johnson Innovation – JJDC, Inc. (JJDC), Pappas Capital and the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation.