Seeking to scale its dementia pipeline beyond its newly-acquired asset from Vigil Neuroscience, Sanofi forged a licensing pact, potentially worth over $1 billion, securing exclusive global rights to develop and commercialise South Korean biotech ADEL’s investigational Alzheimer’s disease antibody and related backup candidates.The agreement announced Monday, focuses on ADEL-Y01, a humanised monoclonal antibody that selectively targets tau acetylated at lysine-280 (acK280), distinct from total-tau therapies — thereby blocking aggregation and spread of toxic tau species while sparing normal microtubule-associated tau.“ADEL's innovative approach to targeting tau acetylation offers a promising and differentiated mechanism for addressing the underlying causes of Alzheimer's disease,” explained Erik Wallstroem, global head of multiple sclerosis, neurology and gene therapy development at Sanofi.The transaction amounts to a total potential value of up to $1.04 billion, including an $80-million non-refundable upfront payment and potential milestone payments to ADEL, in addition to tiered sales royalties reaching the double-digit range.ADEL-Y01, discovered and developed preclinically by ADEL using its proprietary neural disease research platform, has been co-developed since 2020 through a joint research agreement with Oscotec. The asset is currently being investigated in a global Phase I study.Besides anti-amyloid therapies currently on the market and in development, there’s a growing interest in tau-targeting therapies for Alzheimer's disease. However, the latter have also been dented by development challenges, with major players like Biogen, AbbVie and Eli Lilly having scrapped some of their anti-tau programmes over lack of efficacy in the past. Joining them recently was Johnson and Johnson, which ended a mid-stage study investigating posdinemab in patients with mild Alzheimer's after failing to show “statistical significance in slowing clinical decline."