Key Alzheimer’s drug fails memory test, Eli Lilly shares plunge

The dementia-causing disease has grown into the sixth-biggest cause of death in the US, killing about 700,000 people annually, and is the only fatal condition among the top 10 in the USA that can not be prevented, cured or slowed, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

On the ratings front, Eli Lilly has been the subject of a number of recent research reports.

Still, researchers and investors alike are urging the industry not to give up.

James River Group Holdings, Ltd. (NASDAQ:JRVR) announced that certain of the Company’s significant shareholders intend to offer in an underwritten public offering an aggregate of 3,000,000 of the Company’s common shares (the “Selling Shareholders”). “I’m committed to beating the drum for doing well-reasoned and well-researched clinical experiments, which will help drive the field collectively forward”.

Eli Lilly and Company went down -12.63% during trading on 11/23/2016, reaching at $66.39.

“We’re flogging a dead horse”, adds Peter Davies, an Alzheimer’s researcher at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York. Solanezumab is created to sweep away plaques called beta-amyloids, which build up in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s.

The company maintains that the shift simply reflected better understanding of how Alzheimer’s affects the brain; cognitive declines happen before functional ones, so detecting the latter would take a longer, more expensive study than an 18-month trial.

Eli Lilly said it would not pursue approval for the drug to treat mild dementia due to Alzheimer’s disease and that it will “evaluate the impact of these results on the development plans for solanezumab and our other Alzheimer’s pipeline assets”. “We’re disappointed with the results”, Ricks said. The current share price indicates that stock is -11.49% away from its one year high and is moving 14.16% ahead of its one year low. Vamil Divan, an analyst at Credit Suisse, also urged caution. “Lilly never seemed to have a great answer for why they picked the solanezumab dose they did”.

“They are telling you that their business can work regardless, so in many ways they provided some prophylaxis to the market”, said Tony Butler, an analyst with Guggenheim Securities. He said the company was continuing to test the compound in patients with earlier stages of the disease.

Alzheimer’s disease patient Isidora Tomaz, 82, sits in her armchair with two chairs placed in front of her by her husband Amilcar Dos Santos (unseen) to prevent her from falling to the ground in their house in Lisbon September 15, 2009.

The drug’s failure in patients with even mild forms of dementia now throws the so-called amyloid hypothesis into further question.

“There is still no convincing evidence that shows a clear relationship between amyloid deposition and deficits in cognition in humans”, he says. “Until the aducanumab data read out, we have not truly put amyloid to the test”, says Josh Schimmer, a biotechnology analyst at Piper Jaffray in NY.

The company’s portfolio of Alzheimer’s research includes “many other promising approaches”, Eli Lilly executive vice president of science and technology Jan Lundberg said. “We should be aiming for drugs that have larger and more robust effects earlier in development”, he told Alzforum.

Much is still unknown.

The company spent hundreds of millions on solanezumab, testing and retesting it on ever narrower populations of Alzheimer’s patients in hopes of seeing a benefit.

Researchers at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, are also trialling solanezumab, and another similar antibody made by Roche, in people who are now healthy but genetically fated to develop Alzheimer’s.