In the yearlong clinical trial, 165 participants with mild cognitive impairment or dementia from Alzheimer's took either a 1 -, 3 -, 6 -, or 10 - mg / kg dose
of aducanumab once a month, or a placebo.
A new antibody drug
called aducanumab appears to sweep the brain clean of sticky amyloid - beta protein.
Biotech giant Biogen is hoping to break the curse with an all - in bet on its own experimental
treatment aducanumab.
Biogen (NASDAQ: BIIB)
aducanumab seeks to do something similar, and that drug is also in phase 3 trials.
The study was «grossly underpowered» to determine whether cognition was actually better in people who
took aducanumab, or a statistical fluke, notes David Knopman, a neurologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, and another trial investigator.
The trial data hint that an anti — β amyloid antibody drug called
aducanumab warded off cognitive decline in people diagnosed with early Alzheimer's.
Of relevance is that the clinical studies
with aducanumab did not show any differences between the promising results with this mAb in carriers and non-carriers of ApoE4 suffering of mild AD.
These results justify further development of
aducanumab for the treatment of AD.
The trial mainly tested the safety of the drug in people, and so the final word on
whether aducanumab works to ameliorate the memory and cognitive losses associated with Alzheimer's will have to wait until the completion of two larger phase III trials.
In patients with prodromal or mild AD, one year of monthly intravenous infusions of
aducanumab reduces brain Aβ in a dose - and time - dependent manner.
Rival Biogen, however, is still forging ahead with a drug
called aducanumab that's shown some promise in trials (although results have been a bit of a mixed bag).
Patients in the groups that got the drug were given one of four different doses
of aducanumab.
What little encouraging Alzheimer's treatment data does exist — including that around a promising drug called
aducanumab — suggests medications that have gone through clinical trials seem to work better earlier in the dementia disease course, before patients develop full - blown Alzheimer's.
Prof Hardy gives his views on the latest updates in neurodegeneration, including what this year's results in
the aducanumab and solanezumab trials could mean for the search for Alzheimer's treatments.
Here we report the generation of
aducanumab, a human monoclonal antibody that selectively targets aggregated Aβ.
In a transgenic mouse model of AD,
aducanumab is shown to enter the brain, bind parenchymal Aβ, and reduce soluble and insoluble Aβ in a dose - dependent manner.
To verify the effectiveness of
aducanumab, a trial was set in place that involved 165 people receiving the drug and over the course of one year it was reported that the amyloid - beta levels in these people's brains had declined.
That agent,
aducanumab, is designed to bind preferentially to the early clumps of amyloid as they form plaques, and therefore may be more useful in mild or moderate patients who are already showing signs of memory loss and other cognitive problems.
And a new study that looked at a similar drug,
aducanumab, also seemed promising.
Able to slow cognitive decline, BIIB037, or
aducanumab, works by «reducing amyloid plaques in the brains of people with dementia.»