JCR Pharmaceuticals Announces That Acumen Pharmaceuticals Has Exercised its Exclusive Option to Develop Therapeutic Candidates for Alzheimer’s Disease, Enabled by J-Brain Cargo® Technology Platform
- Strategic partnership, announced in July 2025, utilizes JCR’s J-Brain Cargo® to develop a novel blood-brain barrier-penetrating therapy targeting a pathological driver of Alzheimer’s disease
- Option exercise puts Acumen’s Enhanced Brain Delivery (EBD™) program on track for IND filing in mid-2027
JCR Pharmaceuticals Co., Ltd. (TSE 4552; JCR), a global specialty biopharmaceutical company dedicated to developing therapies for rare and genetic diseases, today announced that Acumen Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ: ABOS) exercised its exclusive option to develop, manufacture, and commercialize, on a global basis, up to two candidates for development in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), enabled by JCR’s proprietary blood-brain barrier (BBB)-penetrating technology platform, J-Brain Cargo®.
The partnership, announced in July 2025, focuses on developing a BBB-penetrating treatment for AD that combines JCR’s J-Brain Cargo® with Acumen’s amyloid beta oligomer (AβO)-selective antibodies, which target toxic soluble AβOs, a key pathological driver in the onset and progression of AD. The collaborative program aims to demonstrate the feasibility of applying J-Brain Cargo® in delivering sabirnetug, Acumen’s targeted immunotherapy drug candidate, and other AβO-selective antibodies across the BBB to slow the progression of AD pathology. Earlier this year, Acumen presented non-clinical data from a mouse model of AD at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases and Related Neurological Disorders, which demonstrated that using AβO-selective antibodies with J-Brain Cargo® technology increased brain exposure while preserving target engagement as demonstrated by AβO selectivity. Acumen plans to file an investigational new drug application for this program in mid-2027.
