Imago Pharmaceuticals is a privately held pharmaceutical company engaged in preclinical and clinical development of drug candidates directed against targets implicated in inflammatory, autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases. The company is focuses on developing small molecule inhibitors against stress-activated kinases. The firm's drug development programs organize aound Alzheimerâs disease, Parkinsonâs disease, multiple sclerosis, and pain. Formed in some measure for the purpose, in 2014 Imago Pharmaceuticals licensed from Perrigo a group of preclinical candidates the larger firm had acquired as part of its acquisition of Elan but that were non-core to thir internal needs. The transaction also includes IP and a 535k CNS small-molecule library. In 2015, it was announced by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) that it had acquired a library of research tools around the parkin protein from Imago Pharmaceuticals. These tools â cell lines, plasmids, compounds and more â MJFF judged would accelerate biological study and drug development against this promising disease-modification target. Imago purchased the tools as part of the 2014 deal with health firm Perrigo and had originated at now-defunct biotech Elan Pharmaceuticals, where Imago leaders worked on another target: c-Jun N-terminal kinase, or JNK. The ffirm's princopals continue to work on JNK inhibitors as potential therapeutics for inflammatory, autoimmune and neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson's d
