Three former top researchers at Genentech , the legendary biotech that is now part of Roche Holding , have raised $217 million in venture capital to start a new company, Denali Therapeutics, focused on treating and curing neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, ALS, and Parkinson’s.

The news is another sign of both the large amounts of money available to all biotechnology startups and for a financial turnaround for research efforts against brain diseases that have been tough to beat. NeuroPerspective, a newsletter that tracks neurological treatments, says in the past five years the number of drugs being developed by large drugmakers for brain and nervous system disorders fell 50% to 129 – but that last year, investors poured $3.3 billion into the field, more than in any of the last ten years.

“The science in the field has been breaking open and this has been accelerating over the past decade,” says Tessier-Lavigne. “Denali is based on the idea that the time is right to tackle these diseases systematically and deeply.”

....companies including Biogen, Eli Lilly , Merck, and Genentech are all trying to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s with drugs that block a substance called beta amyloid, which is present in tangles in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Watts says Denali won’t pile in.

Instead, Watts sees a new generation of drug targets emerging from human genetics. He says that just as oncogenes – cancer genes – have lead to a flood of cancer drugs, newly discovered genes linked to degenerative brain disease (the Denali guys called them degenogenes) will provide a basis for a new generation of brain medicines.

Denali will also focus on how inflammation drives brain disease; how the trafficking of substances between cells is involved in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s; and on factors that influence how brain cells die that are common to all brain diseases. Already, the company is looking at least 12 different drug targets in these areas, though it will not disclose more about them yet.


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