Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company Biogen developed the drug and funded the study, which tested aducanumab’s safety in humans and was not created to test for cerebral benefits.
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In a phase 1b study, patients receiving aducanumab demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in beta amyloid in the brain.
The only challenge is that aducanumab treatment can cause fluid in the brain to accumulate, increasing the risk of stroke within those who consume it. But if amyloid plaques were incidental to some other process causing memory loss, then fighting them was probably a distraction. The results, which were realized by researchers at UZH together with the biotech company “Biogen” and the UZH spin-off “Neurimmune”, have been published in the renowned science journal “Nature”.
The build-up of amyloid in the brain has been a treatment target for many years. Over one year, 103 patients received varying doses of the drug and PET scans revealed that those who received the highest dose showed the largest degree of reduction.
This study, of 165 patients, was created to test aducanumab was safe to take.
And on a key test of mental function, subjects who got the experimental drug showed less progression toward dementia at the one-year mark than did those who got placebo. These data support the design of the ongoing phase 3 ENGAGE and EMERGE studies.
Many people worldwide are suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. And while it remains unclear whether aducanumab will be able to modify the effects of Alzheimer’s on patients’ daily lives, Alfred Sandrock, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer as well as executive vice president at Biogen, the pharmaceutical company developing aducanumab, told Nature, in a podcast interview, that the study hints at a beneficial effect on cognition. The promising treatment of aducanumab shows reducing the amyloid plaque levels. This is accompanied by a slowing of clinical decline measured by Clinical Dementia Rating-Sum of Boxes and Mini Mental State Examination scores.
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While the trial was created to assess the safety of the treatment and not whether patients fared better on the drug, an “exploratory analysis” of the data revealed that the treatment appeared to slow the mental decline of patients who responded to the therapy.
