German firm purchases TGen spinoff for $6.3 million

SYGNIS Pharma AG, a German drug developer, has snapped up a two-year-old spinoff of the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) in a $6.3-million cash and stock deal that illustrates the commercial and therapeutic promise of advanced genomic research.

Amnestix, a Burlingame, Calif., firm seeking to develop drugs for memory-related disorders, emerged in 2006 from a line of research conducted by Dietrich Stephan and Matthew Huentelman, respectively director of and associate investigator in TGen's neurogenomics division. Based on their discoveries about genes and gene pathways related to memory and cognition, Amnestix has begun developing small-molecule compounds that could one day be used in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and similar neurological conditions.

SYGNIS, whose leading drug candidate is a compound to treat Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease), has announced that it will continue work on the compounds Amnestix has been developing. And it will retain Amnestix CEO Karoly Nikolich, charging him with building a U.S. presence for SYGNIS and broadening its business and scientific networks. Another element of the Amnestix purchase may help Dr. Nikolich accomplish that network-building: SYGNIS will be gaining access to other, as-yet unspecified TGen projects that relate to central nervous system (CNS) disorders.

"This is an important milestone in the growth and development of our company," said Alfred Bach, CEO of SYGNIS. "The acquisition of Amnestix, with its powerful CNS drug-discovery engine, complements our CNS research-and-development capabilities. Furthermore, it opens direct access to the leading neurogenomic expertise of TGen, and the wider CNS experts in the U.S., through the Amnestix founders."

The research that led to the founding of Amnestix suggests why SYGNIS finds further association with TGen attractive. In 2004, a team of researchers in Switzerland, led by Andreas Papassotiropoulos, a psychiatrist jointly appointed at TGen and the University of Zurich, conducted a study of college students and laborers, gauging variation in study participants' memory capacities by reading participants a list of 30 words, five minutes later asking participants to recall the words, and 24 hours later asking them to recall the words again. The participants' success rates were recorded--and each of them submitted a blood sample.

That was the juncture where, in 2005, Dr. Stephan and Dr. Huentelman stepped in. To increase the study's reliability, they repeated the experiment with a pool of U.S. participants, then brought to bear some of the technological resources that have made TGen a global leader in genetic analysis. They selected a group of the highest- and lowest-performing study participants and conducted a genome-wide screen of their DNA, looking for variations among the roughly 500,000 genes that ordinarily vary from one individual to the next.

With Dr. Papassotiropoulos, Dr. Stephan and Dr. Huentelman reported in an October, 2006 article in Science that they had identified through the genome-screening a series of gene variants and pathways involved in memory and cognition, and uncovered evidence that alleles of the brain protein KIBRA seems to have a role in an individual's memory capacity. "Carriers of KIBRA rs17070145 T allele had 24% better free recall performance 5 min after word presentation," they wrote, "and 19% better free recall performance 24 hours after word presentation than did noncarriers."

The researchers formed Amnestix from those discoveries. Seed funding for the company came from Brain Trust Accelerator Fund LP, a venture capital firm based in Burlingame, prompting the location of the company there, although its ties to TGen and Arizona have remained strong. In addition to the roles that Dr. Stephan and Dr. Huentelman have played the firm has included on its scientific advisory board three other high-level members of TGen's faculty: Jeffrey Trent, president and scientific director; Eric Reiman, neurogenomics clinical director; and Daniel Von Hoff, physician in chief.

"Amnestix and SYGNIS have perfectly complementary expertise and infrastructure that makes the acquisition a natural fit," Dr. Stephan said. "Together, both companies form a powerful and fully integrated CNS-focused biopharmaceutical company that is positioned to lead the field in therapies for brain diseases for decades to come."

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For more information:

"Sygnis Pharma Buys TGen Spinout Amnestix for $6.3M," GenomeWeb News, 06/09/2008

SYGNIS Pharma AG news release, 06/09/2008

"Genetics' Super Summer," Forbes, 10/02/2007

"Common Kibra Alleles Are Associated with Memory Performance," Science, 10/20/2006

"New Genetic Tools May Reveal Roots of Everyday Ills," Wall Street Journal, 04/14/2006