Cerevance, a private Boston-based biotech formed in 2016 as a joint venture between Lightstone Ventures and Takeda, said Wednesday that its most advanced experimental drug succeeded in a late-stage clinical trial in Parkinson’s disease. The drug, solengepras, is not like most existing Parkinson’s therapies: instead of targeting dopamine, it inhibits a protein involved in regulating body coordination and motor function, with the aim of helping patients move better without the involuntary jerking motions, or dyskinesia, that standard medications like levodopa often cause.
The trial tested two once-daily doses of solengepras as add-on therapy in patients who kept experiencing motor fluctuations on levodopa and other drugs. The 341 participants reported an average of 5.65 hours of daily “off” time at the start of the study. The higher dose met the primary endpoint, reducing off time by 0.61 hours compared with placebo at 12 weeks. The key secondary measure, “on” time, also improved at the higher dose, by 0.60 hours, though it only barely hit statistical significance and without the troublesome dyskinesia that can disrupt daily activities. Other measures of motor function, daily living, and sleepiness showed positive findings, and the drug was generally well tolerated with no serious adverse events in the higher-dose arm; the most common adverse events were headache, urinary tract infection, insomnia, and nausea.
Cerevance CEO Craig Thompson said the company plans to discuss the results with the FDA to determine next steps for solengepras. A 0.61-hour reduction is modest, and the topline figures come from a single trade report of a company statement with no independent corroboration located. But the mechanism is genuinely different from the dopamine-centered standard of care, and a clean safety profile matters in a population already burdened by medication side effects.