GSK ends dementia alliance with Alector after setbacks
Alector's chief executive, Arnon Rosenthal, is turning the company's attention to early-stage in-house projects.
Alector has confirmed that an alliance with GSK to develop two drug candidates for dementia has been terminated in the wake of disappointing clinical trial results.
In a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) in the US, South San Francisco-based Alector said GSK has written to the company on 6th July to bring the collaboration on the progranulin-elevating monoclonal antibodies – latozinemab and nivisnebart – to an end.
GSK paid $700 million upfront for rights to the latozinemab and nivisnebart in 2021, amending the agreement in 2023 to make Alector responsible for funding development of the two drugs, which were being developed respectively for frontotemporal dementia (FTN) and Alzheimer's disease.
Fast forward to October 2025, and Alector said it was abandoning the development of latozinemab for FTD associated with a progranulin gene mutation after disappointing results in the INFRONT-3 trial, an outcome that led to the departure of its R&D chief and a halving of its headcount.
Then, in April of this year, Alector said it was discontinuing the phase 2 PROGRESS-AD trial of nivisnebart in individuals with early Alzheimer's disease, following an interim futility analysis, making GSK's decision all-but inevitable. GSK will fully extricate itself from the alliance at the start of 2027.
Alector has been left with an internal development pipeline based on its ABC platform for drug delivery across the blood-brain barrier and into the central nervous system, and enough cash reserves (around $207 million as of the end of March) to fund operations through to the end of 2027.
Its ABC pipeline is currently led by a pair of anti-amyloid antibodies, codenamed AL037 and AL137, which are being prepared for clinical testing next year.
If either of the antibodies makes it through development, it would compete with Eisai/Biogen's Leqembi (lecanemab) and Eli Lilly's Kisunla (donanemab), which are the only two amyloid-targeting drugs to have reached the market for Alzheimer's.
Following after are its AL050 candidate for Parkinson's disease and Lewy body dementia, a glucocerebrosidase (GCase) enzyme replacement therapy, and tau protein-targeting AL064 and AL164 for Alzheimer's and other tauopathies, all in preclinical development.
Alector's chief executive, Arnon Rosenthal, said in the company's first-quarter update that the company has "built a highly differentiated blood-brain barrier platform with the versatility to deliver antibodies, enzymes, proteins, and siRNA to the brain [and which] can make a meaningful difference for patients living with neurodegenerative diseases."
