APRINOIA Therapeutics Inc., based in Taiwan, has announced that they have executed a worldwide non-exclusive licensing agreement for US based Biogen Inc. to access APRINOIA's positron emission tomography (PET) imaging tracer, ¹⁸F-APN-1607, for neurodegenerative diseases.

This is an extension of a collaboration between APRINOIA and Biogen to discover novel PET imaging tracers for visualization and quantification of abnormal tau protein accumulation in the brain.

¹⁸F-APN-1607 is a new generation tau PET imaging tracer with improved selectivity and off-target binding profiles. It is designed to specifically recognize tau proteins in their pathological aggregated states. Pathological tau proteins are associated with neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other tau-related brain disorders (tauopathies), including progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and corticobasal degeneration (CBD). ¹⁸F-APN-1607 could be used to quantify tau burden and visualize distribution of tau abnormality in different types of tauopathies, offering broad clinical utilities.

"We are excited to announce our collaboration with Biogen. It has been a fruitful collaboration to combine expertise from both companies to advance our understanding of ¹⁸F-APN-1607 and to discover next generation imaging tracers," said Ming-Kuei Jang, CEO of APRINOIA. "APRINOIA is committed to make ¹⁸F-APN-1607 and our other imaging tools available to research and medical communities to explore clinical utilities of those tools and facilitate clinical research of potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases."