Roche leaves Alzheimer partnership with UCB

Roche is giving up a third Alzheimer’s disease candidate this year, ending its partnership with UCB just four years after agreeing to work together on new therapies for the nerve disease. Roche has terminated its Alzheimer’s disease partnership with UCB and returned the rights to a Phase 2a candidate. This is the second time this year that Roche has terminated an Alzheimer’s partnership, having returned two failed projects to AC Immune in January.

UCB and Roche subsidiary Genentech agreed in July 2020 to develop bepranemab, then known as UCB0107, for an upfront payment of US$120m and up to US$2bn in potential milestone payments. The end of the partnership was announced when UCB announced the acceptance of an abstract for a Phase IIa trial of bepranemab at the Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials Conference 2024, which takes place in Spain later this month.

UCB stated that the rights to the drug were returned following the termination of the agreement with Roche. Roche had announced at its first-quarter results presentation in April that bepranemab is targeted for regulatory filing in 2027 or later. The drug was not mentioned at the Group’s second-quarter results presentation.

In 2022, Roche had to admit the final failure of the antibody gantenerumab, which had been developed as an anti-amyloid beta antibody in cooperation with Munich-based Morphosys AG. However, Roche has specialised in the early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and is not completely withdrawing from the field.