Led by University of Antwerp Professor and world-renowned Alzheimer’s expert Christine Van Broeckhoven, previous VIB research helped enable the development of PR006. This experimental therapy is currently being evaluated as a potentially disease-modifying, single-dose gene therapy for individuals living with frontotemporal dementia with GRN mutations (FTD-GRN). Sponsored by American gene therapy company Prevail Therapeutics, the PR006 phase 1/2 trials are enrolling patients in clinical centers across different countries.

The teams’ findings indicated that strategies aimed at increasing progranulin levels could be useful to prevent or even treat dementia. That’s why VIB reached out to an industrial partner to help turn these insights into a possible treatment for patients. In 2019, VIB entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with American company Prevail Therapeutics for the development of gene therapy for individuals living with frontotemporal dementia with GRN mutations (FTD-GRN).

A subsidiary of American pharmaceutical firm Eli Lilly and Company, Prevail Therapeutics has now set out to test the developed gene therapy in phase 1/2 clinical trials in the US and Australia. A new treatment is currently being tested as a potentially disease-modifying, single-dose gene therapy for individuals living with this form of dementia. The therapy’s development is based on previous research by, among others, Prof. Christine Van Broeckhoven and her team at VIB and University of Antwerp (Flanders). PR006 is designed to slow or stop disease progression in FTD-GRN patients by increasing progranulin levels via delivery of a healthy GRN gene into the central nervous system (CNS).