Novartis to test Alzheimer's drugs in patients without symptoms
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[July 15, 2014]
By Caroline Copley
ZURICH (Reuters) - Novartis
said it would test two experimental Alzheimer's drugs on
people with a genetic risk of developing dementia,
aiming to gauge whether the treatments can prevent or
delay symptoms of the memory-robbing disease.
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In collaboration with the Banner Alzheimer's Institute, the Swiss
company will study two therapies in cognitively healthy people who
are at risk of developing a build-up in the brain of amyloid
protein, a toxic protein which is believed to cause Alzheimer's.
Currently approved medications only treat symptoms and there are no
licensed drugs that can slow the progression of the disease, which
gradually robs patients of their ability to think and care for
themselves.
Dementia - of which Alzheimer's disease is the most common form -
already affects 44 million people worldwide and this total is set to
reach 135 million by 2050, according to Alzheimer's Disease
International, a non-profit campaign group.
One of Novartis's treatments is an immunotherapy, an injectable
medicine in Phase II clinical trials which works by stimulating the
immune system to produce natural antibodies that attack amyloid.
The second treatment is a so-called BACE inhibitor drug, an oral
pill which is about to enter Phase I trials. This class of
treatments work by blocking an enzyme called beta secretase that is
involved in production of beta-amyloid.
The trial will involve more than 1,300 cognitively healthy patients
aged between 60 and 75 and is planned to start this year.
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The patients have two genetic copies of apolipoprotein E episilon 4
(APOE4) allele, a gene that contains instructions for making a
protein that carries cholesterol and is a well-known risk factor for
Alzheimer's. People who get the gene from both parents have a
10-fold risk of developing Alzheimer's.
Drugmakers have been working for years to develop so-called
disease-modifying drugs, but it is proving an uphill battle. No new
therapies have been approved to treat Alzheimer's in a decade,
according to a recent study from researchers at the Cleveland
Clinic.
Many scientists increasingly believe the best hope is testing drugs
much earlier in the process, before patients' brains are wrecked by
Alzheimer's.
(Editing by David Holmes)
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