A new failure
Another pharmaceutical company has stopped developing a drug for Alzheimer's disease
Evgenia Shcherbina, "The Attic"
Biogen, one of the largest biotech companies in the world, and its Japanese partner Eisai announced the suspension of clinical trials of adukanumab, a drug for Alzheimer's disease, as it proved ineffective in the third, final phase of trials. In light of this news, the company's stock price has fallen, and over the past hours, the owners of Biogen have become poorer by at least $ 15 billion.
Alzheimer's disease is a severe neurodegenerative disease affecting the brain, which leads to a gradual and steady degradation of its functions: memory, attention, intelligence decreases, speech is impaired, a person loses the ability to recognize loved ones, navigate in space and take care of himself. The exact cause of the disease has not yet been established, but it is believed that protein fragments accumulating in the brain – neurofibrillary tangles and beta-amyloids - are involved.
Aducanumab, developed by Biogen in partnership with the pharmaceutical company Neurimmune, was just designed to destroy beta-amyloids. It consisted of human monoclonal antibodies obtained from healthy elderly people without signs of cognitive impairment, or having disorders, but developing unusually slowly. The drug has been developed since 2017.
However, yesterday "Biogen" announced the termination of the development of a drug that has already managed to reach the final phase of clinical trials – randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trials on large samples (thousands of people).
The company's shares, as soon as it became known about the failure of the adukanumab tests, collapsed – at the time of the release of this note, the drop was almost 30%.
Biogen stock price chart
(Yahoo Finance).
As follows from the company's release, this decision was made based on the results of an analysis carried out by an independent third-party organization. The analysis showed that aducanumab's effectiveness practically does not differ from placebo. At the same time, patients at the earliest stage of Alzheimer's disease participated in the trials, the researchers had great hope for the success of the drug, but it was not justified.
Studies of phase 1b (on a sample of up to 20 patients) and phase II (on a sample of several hundred patients) have also been stopped.
Thus, Biogen has joined the list of companies that could not create a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Previously, several giants of the pharmaceutical industry had failed.
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