GeNeuro is a Swiss-based clinical stage company committed to bringing safe and effective solutions for stopping the progression of the disability caused by autoimmune diseases, starting with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).

GeNeuro leverages the growing understanding of human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), which are traces in the genome of viral infections that affected our ancestors, and today represent over 8% of the total human DNA. HERVs do not normally encode for proteins but, in pathological situations, HERV proteins can be expressed and found in the affected tissues, and may play a key role in the onset and development of multiple autoimmune diseases. 

GeNeuro is testing temelimab, a monoclonal antibody targeting HERV-W Env, a HERV protein which is found in the brain of MS patients and has been showed to be capable of fueling important mechanisms behind the build-up of brain damage and disability. Temelimab has already shown on 200+ patients for two years that it has a coherent impact across all key MRI markers associated with disease progression. Temelimab has also been succesfully tested at the Karolinska Institutet’s Academic Specialist Center in Stockholm on a cohort of patients experiencing disability progression in the absence of relapses, due to a concomitant treatment with an efficacious anti-inflammatory drug, to confirm its potential against the progression of disability, which is the key unmet need for MS patients. Positive results from this study were presented at ECTRIMS 2022.

In addition, GeNeuro is currently running the first biomarker-based Phase 2 clinical trial against neuropsychiatric syndromes affecting Long-COVID patients. This ground-breaking trial benefits from the important financial backing by the Swiss and European authorities who seek credible potential therapeutic solutions to address a major public health problem which affects millions of patients. The personalized medicine trial evaluates temelimab as a Disease Modifying Therapy in long-COVID patients suffering from severe neurological and psychiatric symptoms and who are positive for the presence of the pathogenic W-ENV protein in their blood; results are expected in Q2 2024.

GeNeuro has also entered into a partnership with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS, part of the NIH), as NINDS evidenced the potential role of another HERV protein (HERV-K Env) found in patients with the sporadic form of ALS. The joint research led to two publications in Annals of Neurology in 2022. GeNeuro has launched a preclinical development program of a novel antibody targeting HERV-K Env.

The growing understanding of HERV biology in many areas of key unmet medical needs, such as type 1 diabetes and inflammatory psychosis, will offer new avenues for bringing much needed new and effective treatments to patients. GeNeuro is ideally placed to leverage this knowledge into new therapeutic solutions.