Accure Therapeutics Funding News- Accure Therapeutics Raises $1.6Mn In Funding

ACT-02 is a new drug that could help treat Parkinson’s disease by targeting Prolyl Endopeptidase (PREP), a promising target that was previously overlooked.

Parkinson's is the second most common and fastest-growing neurodegenerative disease, affecting more than 10 million people worldwide, including nearly 1 million in the US. This number is expected to rise to 1.2 million by 2030.

Accure Therapeutics received a €1.02 million grant from The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF) to support their project, "ACT-02 as a disease-modifying therapy for Parkinson’s" (MJFF-025939). This project is a collaboration with the Institute of Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Pharmacy at Stiftung Tierärztliche Hochschule Hannover, led by Prof. Dr. Franziska Richter Assencio.

The funding will help complete the preclinical work needed for investigational new drug (IND) studies, with the goal of applying for a phase I IND study in 2026.

Prof Dr Franziska Richter Assencio, said, “Our team is extremely keen to further study ACT-02, which has already demonstrated neuroprotective effects in dopaminergic neurons, reduction of α-synuclein aggregation and neuroinflammation, while improving mitochondrial functioning and enhancing the motor and cognitive performance in Thy1-aSyn mice (line 61) experiments,”

The FNRBRIDGES program, managed by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR), offers financial support for partnerships between public research institutions in Luxembourg and companies, both national and international.

A grant of €0.48 million, including both financial and in-kind support, has been awarded to the Transcend-PD project. The project is called "Pharmacological targeting of Prolyl Endopeptidase in human induced Pluripotent Stem cell-derived neurons for the development of precision medicine therapeutic strategies in Parkinson’s disease."

This project is a partnership between the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) Translational Neuroscience group and Accure Therapeutics. It aims to test the effectiveness of ACT-02 in patient-derived stem cell models of Parkinson’s disease (PD), with the goal of improving patient selection for future precision medicine treatments.

"These two grants are significant steps forward for us and our academic partners in the development of our first-in-class drug candidate, ACT-02, for Parkinson’s disease,” said Laurent Nguyen, co-founder and CEO at Accure Therapeutics.

"We aim with ACT-02 to develop a game changer drug to treat patients suffering from Parkinson's Disease."