AstronauTx has exercised its Saniona option, advancing a sleep-focused neurodegeneration candidate toward IND-enabling studies.
Sleep has become one of the most talked-about levers in longevity science, credited with everything from metabolic health to cognitive resilience.
AstronauTx, a UK biotech founded by SV Health’s Dementia Discovery Fund, is now translating that interest into a drug pipeline. The company has exercised its option under a 2023 research collaboration with Danish biopharma Saniona, securing exclusive worldwide rights to develop, manufacture and commercialise a development candidate, ATX0926, that emerged from the partnership [1].
The molecule targets a novel, still-undisclosed ion channel, discovered using Saniona’s IonBase platform, that AstronauTx believes influences glymphatic flow, the process by which the brain clears metabolic waste, largely during sleep.
ATX0926 is now expected to enter IND-enabling studies, the battery of safety and manufacturing work required before a drug can be tested in humans.
Sleep architecture as a disease driver, not just a symptom
AstronauTx’s underlying thesis, unusual enough to be worth spelling out, is that changes in sleep architecture do not simply accompany neurodegenerative disease; they may help cause it. The company is working on the premise that slow-wave sleep, the deep sleep stage most associated with memory consolidation and brain clearance, is a modifiable risk factor for conditions including dementia. Improving it, rather than simply monitoring it, is the stated goal.
“Exercising this option reflects the strength of the science that has come out of our collaboration with Saniona and our conviction in this target and its mechanism of promoting glymphatic flow as a potential new approach to treating neurological disease,” said Jane Rhodes, CEO of AstronauTx.
The company says its approach leans on quantifiable endpoints, including EEG-based sleep architecture metrics and measures of cognitive function and glymphatic flow, rather than symptom-based scales alone, an attempt to bring more objective biomarkers to a field that has historically struggled with them.
What Saniona gets out of the deal
For Saniona, the option exercise converts years of discovery work into near-term value and a longer-term royalty stream. The company will receive AstronauTx Series A shares worth US$5 million, priced on the same terms as AstronauTx’s October 2023 Series A round, and will book that amount as income.
Beyond the equity, Saniona is eligible for up to US$172 million in development, regulatory and commercial milestones, split roughly $97 million for the earlier stages and $75 million for commercial success, plus tiered royalties on any eventual product sales.
“AstronauTx’s decision to exercise its option is a strong endorsement of both the scientific progress achieved through our collaboration and Saniona’s ion channel discovery platform,” said Thomas Feldthus, CEO of Saniona. “It demonstrates our ability to generate and advance high-quality development candidates together with world-class partners while enabling us to retain meaningful long-term value through equity ownership, milestones and royalties.”
The deal adds to a growing list of external validations for Saniona’s ion channel platform, which also underpins research collaborations with Boehringer Ingelheim and Cephagenix, alongside licensing arrangements with Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Acadia Pharmaceuticals and Medix.
For AstronauTx, backed by a $61 million Series A that included the Novartis Venture Fund and Bristol Myers Squibb, ATX0926 becomes the clearest test yet of whether sleep biology can be turned into a clinical-stage neurology pipeline.
