Bicycle Therapeutics Enters Neuroscience Arena through Collaboration with Dementia Discovery Fund

Bicycle Therapeutics, a biotechnology company pioneering a new class of therapeutics based on its proprietary bicyclic peptide (Bicycle) product platform, announced a collaboration with the Dementia Discovery Fund (DDF) to use Bicycle technology for the development of novel therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases. With DDF, a specialized venture capital fund focused on discovering and developing novel therapies for dementia, Bicycle plans to develop Bicycles to modulate the activity of proteins implicated in the progression of dementia.

“This is a landmark collaboration for Bicycle,” said Kevin Lee, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Bicycle Therapeutics. “Fifty million people worldwide live with dementia, yet there is no cure for these terrible diseases. Despite the huge burden of these illnesses on individuals, families and society, conventional approaches have so far provided limited benefit. We believe our Bicycles bring a fresh approach to this area, and we are thrilled to work with DDF to apply our proprietary technology to the potential treatment of dementia.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Bicycle will identify Bicycles that bind to clinically-validated dementia targets. If promising lead compounds are identified, Bicycle will own the resulting IP and, with DDF, have the option to jointly establish a new company to develop those compounds.

“Bicycle has developed a unique screening platform that has shown on multiple occasions it can help identify differentiated drug candidates for a diverse range of targets that have historically been considered intractable to conventional small-molecule approaches,” said Tetsuyuki Maruyama, Chief Scientific Advisor at DDF. “We are delighted to be working with the Bicycle team to apply this unique technology to some of the most challenging CNS diseases.”