PYC Therapeutics announced the results of preclinical research demonstrating the ability of its breakthrough PPMO (Peptide conjugated Phosphorodiamidate Morpholino Oligomer) technology to deliver superior levels of RNA therapeutic to cells throughout the brain. Over 50 million people globally suffer from a neurodegenerative disease, with over 3 million people suffering from rarer neurodegenerative disease such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or Huntington's disease1. The pharmaceutical market size to serve this patient population is estimated to be worth in excess of 30B USD per annum2 and this is only anticipated to grow with an aging global population. For the vast majority of these patients, there are no disease modifying therapies available. A major barrier to development of precision medicines for neurodegenerative disease has been the poor delivery of these medicines to the brain. Insufficient depth of penetration and therefore inadequate delivery to target cells, has prevented drugs from having meaningful impact on these diseases, without causing significant toxicity. This has been especially true for naked PMOs (i.e., PMOs without a delivery molecule), which have particularly poor uptake in adult mouse models, hampering their otherwise ideal safety, durability and target engagement profile--benefits that set PMOs apart from other RNA therapeutics such as Antisense Oligonucleotides (ASOs). Building off this promising proof-of-concept data, PYC is scaling up discovery efforts to ultimately enable clinical assessment of a promising PPMO drug candidate for a neurodegenerative condition. The Company remains on track to name a CNS drug candidate in 2021 and in parallel, PYC intends to further optimise its delivery technology for CNS administration including assessing both efficacy and safety of PYC's PPMO technology in larger animals.