Eli Lilly Alzheimer’s drug shows some benefit, more testing needed to confirm

Innovating care in a tough-to-treat indicationIn its presentation on Wednesday, the company will unveil data showing whether or not solanezumab can halt Alzheimer’s disease progression in patients suffering from a mild form of the disease.

The Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company will debut their new drug solanezumab at the Alzheimer’s Association worldwide Conference.

The manufacturer of the drug, Eli Lilly, had abandoned a trial in 2012 after disappointing results.

The study of an antibody called solanezumab shows that it reduces the decline in brain function of patients in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease by around 30%.

“The results provide encouraging evidence that solanezumab could indeed be acting on the disease processes that drive Alzheimer’s”, said Dr Eric Karran, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK.

Data from two of the leading companies developing Alzheimer’s drugs left patients, researchers and investors with a frustrating message: keep waiting.

A 6 mg dose of Biogen’s experimental Alzheimer’s disease drug significantly reduced beta amyloid plaque in the brain but failed to significantly slow mental decline, potentially tempering great enthusiasm that greeted data on two other doses of the treatment earlier this year.

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Safety was also closely watched; the trial has shown a side effect known as ARIA, for amyloid-related imaging abnormalities, associated with removal of plaques from the brain.

“The placebo group never caught up, so the earlier you start treatment, the more effective it can be”, says Maria Carrillo, chief science officer at the US Alzheimer’s Association.

Initially, the first trials failed to show any real benefit, but after researchers gave the data a second look they discovered people with mild symptoms didn’t get worse.

“Slowing the rate of progression of disease by one third is an important change on the long-term trajectory, on the long-term impact of the disease”, Paul Aisen, a neuroscientist at the University of California at San Diego who worked as a consultant for Lilly on its drug, said at the AAIC meeting.

“We will have to wait for the ongoing trials to finish to know the full risks and benefits of these drugs”, he said. The company did a crossover in the trial wherein those who took placebo were later given salanezumab and compared to those who took salanezumab from the beginning of the study.

Previous studies have been ineffective at treating Alzheimer’s disease.

The decline in Alzheimer’s is unstoppable – drugs can help with symptoms, but nothing prevents the inexorable death of brain cells. 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.

Researchers say they’ve improved the selection of patients for Alzheimer’s trials by ensuring patients have beta amyloid and by testing treatments before the disease becomes too advanced, reports Reuters.

He said: ” I would very cautiously go along with this announcement possibly being significant, though unfortunately in the media this morning we have the usual “medical breakthrough” spin.

850,000 people in the United Kingdom have some form of dementia; in the United States almost 5.4 million people live with Alzheimer’s.