The Tau Pipeline Enabling Program (T-PEP)

The Tau Pipeline Enabling Program (T-PEP) is designed to fast-track the development of disease-modifying interventions for tauopathies by promoting advanced studies of novel targets, agents, and therapeutic strategies. The program prioritizes projects that directly address the toxicity of tau or explore neurobiological mechanisms potentially exacerbating tau formation or toxicity, such as calcium dyshomeostasis, mitochondrial dysfunction, neuroinflammation, and microtubule instability, among others. Funded research must aim for lead optimization or IND-enabling studies, expressly excluding compound or target discovery phases. T-PEP encourages collaboration across interdisciplinary teams, leveraging academic, CROs, and consultant expertise to push promising projects towards drug discovery. The program is accessible to researchers in academic settings and small companies, favoring entities with 50 or fewer employees, providing a funding cap of $750,000 with specific conditions on indirect costs and project duration. Progress toward project milestones is closely monitored by the funders, with fund disbursement contingent upon demonstrated advancements.