TauRx Therapeutics Ltd is a startup pharmaceutical company

Pharmaceutical company

The pharmaceutical industry develops, produces, and markets drugs licensed for use as medications. Pharmaceutical companies are allowed to deal in generic and/or brand medications and medical devices...

 that is based in Singapore

Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...

.

The company was founded in 2002 by the late gynecologist, surgeon

Surgeon

In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage...

 and venture capitalist K. M. Seng and the research biologist

Biologist

A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of life. Typically biologists study organisms and their relationship to their environment. Biologists involved in basic research attempt to discover underlying mechanisms that govern how organisms work...

 Claude Wischik who is currently its CEO.

In 1988 Wischik and coworkers discovered that abnormal fibres of tau protein

Tau protein

Tau proteins are proteins that stabilize microtubules. They are abundant in neurons of the central nervous system and are less common elsewhere, but are also expressed at very low levels in CNS astrocytes and oligodendrocytes...

 form inside nerve cells in patients with Alzheimer disease, and that their aggregation correlatates to the development of dementia

Dementia

Dementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging...

. The company has focused on the development of drugs that dissolve tau fibres in an attempt to manage patients with Alzheimer. Rember

Rember

Methylthioninium chloride is an investigational drug being developed by the University of Aberdeen and TauRx Therapeutics that has been shown in early clinical trials to be an inhibitor of Tau protein aggregation. The drug is of potential interest for the treatment of patients with Alzheimer's...

is an investigational drug for this purpose by TauRx Therapeutics.