Voyager Therapeutics reports preclinical activity on tau silencing gene therapy

Voyager Therapeutics announced new data from its two preclinical programs targeting pathological tau for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. Data on VY-TAU01, Voyager’s lead anti-tau antibody candidate, and on Voyager’s tau silencing gene therapy program will be presented at the upcoming 2024 International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases and Related Neurological Disorders, taking place March 5-9, 2024, in Lisbon, Portugal. Tau Silencing Gene Therapy Program: The data demonstrate that a single intravenous administration of one of Voyager’s tau silencing gene therapy candidates in mice expressing human tau resulted in broad AAV distribution across multiple brain regions and dose-dependent reductions in tau messenger RNA levels of up to 90%. Based on these data, Voyager has advanced this program into late research and expects to file an investigational new drug application in 2026. VY-TAU01 Anti-Tau Antibody: Voyager also will report new preclinical data demonstrating that VY-TAU01, the Company’s lead antibody targeting pathological tau, and Ab-01, its murine surrogate, were well-tolerated and showed favorable pharmacokinetic profiles following IV administration in NHPs and P301S transgenic mice expressing pathological human tau. Voyager continues to anticipate an IND filing for VY-TAU01 in the first half of 2024.