Alzheimer’s disease has beaten back another effort to tame it.
Biogen and its Japanese pharma partner Eisai said Thursday that they were halting two Phase 3 clinical trials of aducanumab, a drug that was designed to slow the worsening of Alzheimer’s by targeting brain-destroying protein fragments known as beta-amyloid.
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wow all the eggs in one basket just brilliant, lost 16 BILLION dollars…yet I’ll bet the CEO makes millions in bonuses and if made to leave which they should be, will get a golden parachute worth MILLIONS for nearly destroying or who knows maybe actually destroying a company
No doubt AA removing the plaques should work to improve the outcome of the disease but the wholes remain and the disease would progress
Trying to stop Alzheimer’s once it is going, is a hopeless proposition unless somebody can show that neural cells can regenerate. A situation that we now is unreal. Removing plaque can create more problems, plaque immobilizes toxic amyloid-beta oligomers, hence removing plaque increases the concentration of free toxic components. While aducanumab may have protective effects, there are myriad amyloid beta oligomers, which means you would need an array of antibodies to block the different flavors of toxic amyloid. Perhaps a mixture of different antibodies would be more effective. Once amyloid oligomers are formed, they promote tau phosphorylation that amplifies damage; thus, an after the facts blocking of amyloid oligomers is too late too little. Finally, immune prevention is a more realistic goal than try to cure what apparently is incurable
I wonder if anyone tried going other way. Pushing oligomerization toward plaques – to prevent toxicity of oligomers. As far as I understand plaque amounts in brain do not correlate to AD symptoms (i.e healthy individuals might have more plaques than AD patients). It is very disappointing and very sad for families with AD patients. 🙁
I would like to know more about Alzheimer’s trials
https://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers/clinical-trials