A firm developing a drug class licensed from Vanderbilt University for Parkinson’s disease has secured more than $10 million in Series A financing.

Nashville, Tennessee-based Appello Pharmaceuticals said last week it had raised $10.5 million in the round, led by Deerfield Management and Mountain Group Partners. The company plans to use the funding to develop positive allosteric modulators of the metabotropic glutamate receptor subtype 4, also known as mGlu4 PAMs. The preclinical-stage drugs were developed at the Vanderbilt Center for Neuroscience Drug Discovery.

The company’s rationale for the drugs is that the current standard of care, dopamine replacement therapy, relieves some of the motor symptoms of Parkinson’s, but also causes involuntary and uncontrollable movements called dyskinesia, becoming decreasingly beneficial over time. The mGlu4 PAMs work using a different mechanism of action, by modulating the neurotransmitter glutamate, and preclinical models have shown they relieve motor symptoms like rigidity and akinesia.

Researchers have had an eye on the drug class for many years. A 2009 paper in the journal Future Medicinal Chemistry laid out mGlu4-positive allosteric modulation as a potential target for treating the disease.

In addition to Appello, Geneva-based Addex Therapeutics, also has an mGlu4 PAM program. The firm has an mGlu4 PAM, ADX88178, in the lead-optimization phase of preclinical development for Parkinson’s disease, addiction and autoimmune disease. And another company, Prexton Therapeutics, is running a Phase II clinical trial to investigate an mGlu4-targeting drug, foliglurax, in reducing motor complications of levodopa in Parkinson’s patients. Prexton, based in Geneva and Amsterdam, was acquired in March by Danish drugmaker H. Lundbeck, for 100 million euros.

The global market for Parkinson’s disease is expected to reach $5.24 billion by 2025, according to a forecast by Transparency Market Research. Another report, released in October by MarketsandMarkets, noted that dopamine replacement drugs – carbidopa and levodopa – were the largest drug class in the Parkinson’s disease markets. The market is further segmented into dopamine receptor agonists, MAO inhibitors, COMT inhibitors, anticholinergics and others.

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