A new drug may succeed where others have failed in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease. A drug from Biogen Inc. may be the next best hope in the often hopeless and frustrating search for an Alzheimer’s treatment.
Learn more about the drug and its potential impact in the search for a cure for Alzheimer’s.
Success of Biogen Drug Brings New Hope for Alzheimer’s Treatment
Biogen stock has jumped and even neared a buy point after its latest Alzheimer’s drug showed promising results at two-year and three-year checkpoints. The drug, named “aducanumab,” is an injected antibody that works to reduce beta amyloid deposits in the brain, similar to the drug from Eli Lilly that failed earlier this year, disappointing many.
Biogen says that, “Aducanumab (BIIB037) is an investigational drug being developed for the treatment of early Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Aducanumab is a human recombinant monoclonal antibody (mAb) derived from a de-identified library of B cells collected from healthy elderly subjects with no signs of cognitive impairment or cognitively impaired elderly subjects with unusually slow cognitive decline using Neurimmune’s technology platform called Reverse Translational Medicine (RTM). Biogen licensed aducanumab from Neurimmune under a collaborative development and license agreement.”
They go on to say that, “Aducanumab is thought to target aggregated forms of beta amyloid including soluble oligomers and insoluble fibrils which can form into amyloid plaque in the brain of AD patients. Based on pre-clinical and Phase 1b data to date, treatment with aducanumab has been shown to reduce amyloid plaque levels.”
The drug was accepted into the FDA’s Fast Track program in September 2016 and in April 2017 the drug was accepted into the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare’s (MHLW) Sakigake Designation System.
The most recent scans show that amyloid is consistently declining among those using the Alzheimer’s treatment drugs over the course of two and three years. Results from three large, late-stage Alzheimer’s trials are expected in 2019, including the drug from Biogen.
Are you hopeful that this drug could potentially become an Alzheimer’s treatment? Why or why not? We’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
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