Company: ARVN
Filing Date: 2025-02-11
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0001655759-25-000016
Chunk: 117

Company: ARVINAS, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-02-11
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 117
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 is thought to cause PD.

Antibody or aggregation inhibitor-based therapies targeting these proteins thought to be the cause of these neurodegenerative diseases have failed to show clinically meaningful benefit to date. While some existing products provide symptomatic relief to Alzheimer’s and PD patients, they have significant side effect risks and over time gradually lose their effectiveness in treating the symptoms of the disease. Further, while there are now amyloid-directed antibody therapies that modestly impact extracellular A-beta with vascular side effects that can be severe, there are no approved disease-modifying treatments targeting intracellular tau or alpha-synuclein for Alzheimer’s or PD.

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Developing PROTAC Targeted Protein Degraders that Cross the Blood Brain Barrier 

Engineering PROTAC degraders that cross the blood-brain barrier is necessary to achieve targeted elimination of disease-causing intracellular proteins from within the CNS. The ability of a targeted therapy to cross the blood-brain barrier is a highly desirable characteristic in developing effective therapeutics for patients with neurodegenerative diseases as compared with therapies delivered directly into the CNS via invasive intrathecal delivery. Any product candidates for neurodegenerative disease must reach their intended intracellular targets in the brain at exposure levels that will provide a therapeutic effect, while having an acceptable safety profile. 

Importantly, we have achieved brain penetration in preclinical models following parenteral administration of PROTAC degrader molecules. These PROTAC degrader molecules achieved concentrations in the brain sufficient to induce degradation of the aggregated proteins, widespread penetration into different parts of the brain, and brain/plasma ratios of 0.5 to 5.0, comparable to approved therapeutics with CNS activity. Our research efforts are aimed at designing PROTAC degraders to either specifically target pathologic oligomers or monomers of mutant huntingtin, tau, and α-synuclein, for the treatment of Huntington's disease, Alzheimer’s disease (tauopathies) and PD (synucleinopathies), respectively, or to impact pathway proteins contributing to their pathology in these diseases. 

Developing PROTAC Targeted Protein Degraders that Degrade Proteins Associated with Neurodegenerative Diseases 

We have conducted preclinical studies to establish the potential of our PROTAC Discovery Engine in the CNS for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, including tauopathies, the largest of which is Alzheimer’s disease. We have demonstrated that tau PROTAC protein degrader molecules could be dosed peripherally and degrade pathogenic tau in the brain