For decades, scientists approached Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and psychiatric disorders as fundamentally separate problems, each with its own biology, its own targets, its own pipeline. But a growing body of evidence is rewriting that assumption. At the center of the new thinking is a single powerful concept: neuroinflammation. When the brain’s immune system misfires, it doesn’t cause damage in isolation. It acts as an underlying catalyst across a spectrum of neurological and psychiatric conditions. Biocom member companies are turning this insight into therapies for patients who have long had nowhere else to turn.

Therini Bio: Targeting the Spark

Therini Bio has taken a novel approach to treating neurodegenerative diseases by zeroing in on a specific molecular culprit: fibrin. Under healthy conditions, fibrin is essential for blood clotting. But when blood vessels in the brain become leaky, which happens in Alzheimer’s disease, fibrin escapes into brain tissue, activating microglia and triggering the destructive inflammation that drives neuronal loss. Therini’s lead candidate, THN391, is a potential first-in-class antibody designed to block the neuroinflammatory cascade without interfering with fibrin’s essential coagulation function. The company reported positive Phase 1a safety results in early 2025 and has since dosed the first patient in a Phase 1b Alzheimer’s trial, with initial efficacy data expected in mid-2026.

Annexon Biosciences: Stopping Complement at the Source

Brisbane-based Annexon Biosciences has built its platform around a single molecular insight: that C1q, the initiating molecule of the classical complement pathway, is a primary driver of neuroinflammation across multiple devastating diseases. Annexon’s pipeline spans autoimmune, neurodegenerative and ophthalmic diseases, targeting the unmet needs of nearly 10 million people worldwide. Its most advanced program, tanruprubart, targets Guillain-Barré syndrome. In its Phase 3 study, approximately 90% of tanruprubart-treated patients improved by week 1, and more than twice as many achieved a normal state of health at week 26 compared to placebo. A BLA submission is in progress. Beyond GBS, Annexon is advancing programs in Huntington’s disease and geographic atrophy, illustrating how broadly the complement-neuroinflammation connection reaches across disease.

Aspen Neuroscience: Rebuilding What’s Lost

Aspen Neuroscience is working to repair the damage neuroinflammation causes in Parkinson’s disease, where chronic inflammation contributes to the irreversible loss of dopamine-producing neurons. Aspen is developing the world’s first autologous iPSC-derived neuron replacement therapy for Parkinson’s disease, using a patient’s own cells to regenerate lost dopaminergic neurons. The company’s ASPIRO Phase 1/2a trial has advanced to Cohort 3, with six-month data from the first three patients showing encouraging safety and patient-reported improvements. In late 2025, Aspen closed a $115 million Series C round, bringing total capital raised to over $340 million.

Acadia Pharmaceuticals: Treating the Whole Brain

In conditions like Parkinson’s disease psychosis and Lewy body dementia, neuroinflammatory processes contribute to hallucinations and behavioral disturbances that can be as debilitating as physical symptoms. San Diego-based Acadia Pharmaceuticals has built a portfolio that takes the full scope of CNS disease seriously. Its two approved therapies, NUPLAZID and DAYBUE, are projected to generate more than $1 billion in combined net sales in 2025. The company’s pipeline includes nine disclosed programs, with seven Phase 2 or Phase 3 studies anticipated to launch in 2025 and 2026, including a study of ACP-204 for Lewy body dementia psychosis.

Neurocrine Biosciences: Three Decades of CNS Leadership

Neurocrine Biosciences has committed to neuroscience longer than nearly any company in the Biocom community. Founded in 1992, the company built its commercial franchise on INGREZZA and recently launched CRENESSITY. Building on that foundation, Neurocrine is advancing a diversified pipeline including two Phase 3 programs: osavampator for major depressive disorder and direclidine for schizophrenia. The company is also moving into neuroinflammation directly, entering a collaboration to develop NLRP3 inhibitors, one of the most closely watched targets in the neuroinflammation field, in a deal worth up to $881.5 million in potential milestones.

Montara Therapeutics: Making the “Undruggable” Druggable

Many promising CNS targets exist in both the brain and the body, forcing developers to cap doses to avoid peripheral side effects and sacrifice efficacy before a therapy can do its best work. Bay Area-based Montara Therapeutics was founded to solve exactly that problem. Montara’s BrainOnly platform pairs a brain-penetrant, target-specific drug with a non-brain-penetrant peripheral blocker, concentrating therapeutic activity exclusively in the brain while shutting down peripheral side effects. The founding team previously built Mitokinin, a Parkinson’s-focused company acquired by AbbVie, and is now advancing early programs targeting Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Superfluid Dx: Finding Alzheimer’s Before It Takes Hold

Every therapy for Alzheimer’s faces the same obstacle: by the time patients show symptoms, decades of neuroinflammatory damage have already occurred. Bay Area-based Superfluid Dx is developing a blood test for Alzheimer’s and other dementias by analyzing cell-free mRNA circulating in the blood. If the approach succeeds, it could bring Alzheimer’s diagnostics into primary care settings, enabling earlier intervention and giving any future treatment its best chance of working.

A Community Taking On the Brain

Across these seven companies and many more throughout Biocom’s community, a coherent vision is taking shape: that the brain and immune system are deeply intertwined, and that dysfunction at their intersection underlies conditions ranging from Alzheimer’s to depression to Parkinson’s. For the millions of patients still waiting for answers, the momentum has never been more promising.