Alzheimer’s Drug Solanezumab is Again Proposed – This Time as a Slowing Agent

As a part of the Alzheimer’s Association’s research program, AAIC serves as a catalyst for generating new knowledge about dementia and fostering a vital, collegial research community. In Alzheimer’s disease, sticky beta-amyloid plaques build up between brain cells, like a blockage in a pipe.

The discovery was announced at the Alzheimer’s Association worldwide conference in Washington DC, on July 22 which saw studies of three alternative antibody therapies presented. “What you are hearing here represents solid advances”.

Pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly said Solanezumab had been shown to put the brakes on memory loss and cognitive decline in those with mild symptoms of dementia.

Over 800,000 people across Britain suffer from dementia, with 61% of the total being women. However, he did add that it is important to continue in the research. In the earlier trial, half the participants took a placebo, but for the extension, all people were switched to solanezumab.

Two studies from Sweden presented at AAIC 2015 suggest a correlation between childhood school performance (ages 9-10) and the development of late life dementia. It usually takes between 18 months and two years for new drugs to be regulated by the health watchdogs. It is the first time that a drug has been shown to tackle the underlying disease process, rather than just the symptoms.

In the Eli Lilly analysis, the researchers said the results showed that the treatment differences between the early-start and delayed-start groups did not vanish, and that the later group did not catch up with the others – leading scientists also to conclude that there is a potential benefit to starting the drug as early as possible.

In addition to altering patient diagnosis, results showed that knowledge of amyloid status as determined by florbetapir imaging changed patient management in the majority of study patients, particularly Alzheimer’s disease medications (cholinesterase inhibitor use), in a direction consistent with amyloid status. There’s also some evidence that this might be improving test scores in the patients who got the very highest doses.

The new findings don’t prove that Lilly’s solanezumab really works; a larger study is underway that won’t end until late 2016.

In those patients, solanezumab appeared to slow the progression of cognitive decline by about 34 percent, they said.

Roche also had updated results from a previously-reported trial of its gantenerumab candidate that failed to show a benefit on cognition.

“Think about a disease that has a 10-year span. We’re talking about delaying progression to [a nursing home] or to loss of ability to communicate with family”, says Paul Aisen, director of the University of Southern California’s Alzheimer’s Therapeutic Research Institute.

But he said it is becoming clearer that Alzheimer’s resembles a syndrome more than a disease, with multiple pathways and pathologies and therefore no single target to focus on for a possible cure.

Currently, there are three FDA-approved radiopharmaceutical available to use with PET scans for amyloid imaging.