AC Immune secures $4M grant to extend Phase 2 Parkinson's trial
What's the deal? AC Immune, a Swiss clinical-stage biopharma company, has secured a $4 million research grant from the Vijay and Marie Goradia Charitable Foundation. The money will fund an extension of the Phase 2 VacSYn trial of ACI-7104, the company's active immunotherapy targeting alpha-synuclein in early Parkinson's disease.
The grant is one of three recently awarded to Swiss biotech firms. AlveoliXDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → won a €1M Eurostars grant for a nucleic acid delivery project, and CombioxinDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → received CHF 1.1 million from InnosuisseDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → for a drug targeting immune deficiency in critically ill patients.
Why now? AC Immune reported positive interim results from the VacSYn trial in December 2025, suggesting ACI-7104 could have a disease-modifying effect and slow Parkinson's progression. The data also showed a favourable safety profile, robust antibody responses, and encouraging clinical signals.
Final results from Part 1 of the trial (to week 104) are expected in the second half of 2026. The grant-funded extension will generate long-term data especially valuable for patients with prodromal and early Parkinson's, who would likely need prolonged treatment.
What could go wrong? Neurodegenerative disease trials are notoriously difficult. Promising interim signals have a long history of failing to hold up in later-stage or longer-duration studies. Active immunotherapies targeting protein aggregation in the brain remain an unproven approach, and regulatory approval is far from guaranteed.
Grant funding, while non-dilutive, is also finite. AC Immune will eventually need additional capital — or a commercial partner — to advance ACI-7104 beyond this trial extension.
The signal: AC Immune is classified as a late-stage company on Dealroom, yet it is turning to a charitable foundation rather than traditional venture or pharma partnership capital to extend a pivotal clinical trial — a sign that even mature biotechs working on neurodegenerative diseases face funding gaps in the long, expensive path to proof of efficacy. With Innosuisse, Eurostars, and now philanthropic grants all active in a single week of Swiss biotech news, the country's non-dilutive funding ecosystem is doing heavy lifting at a time when private life-sciences investment remains selective.
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