Merck has stopped research on the drug verubecestat
A new drug for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease turned out to be ineffective
Anna Stavina, XX2 century
Pharmaceutical company Merck announced the termination of the EPOCH study. The work was devoted to the study of the effectiveness of the drug verubecestat in the treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease. The decision to close the program was made after an external independent data monitoring committee concluded that there was virtually no chance of success for the new tool. A separate study of the drug verubecestat in patients on the eve of Alzheimer's disease is still ongoing, since experts have no claims to the safety of the drug.
Verubecestat refers to inhibitors of beta-secretase, an enzyme involved in the formation of pathological beta-amyloid protein. Deposits of the latter, in turn, are presumably the underlying cause of Alzheimer's disease. Drugs that were supposed to act directly on beta-amyloid, for example, bapineuzumab (bapineuzumab) and solanezumab (solanezumab), have repeatedly failed in clinical trials. Therefore, doctors are now considering alternative approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease, for example, the use of drugs that suppress the activity of beta-secretase.
Company development Merck was considered the most promising of the existing ones today. However, the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company is not abandoning its plans to create its own beta-secretase inhibitor, work in this area is also being carried out by research teams from Biogen/Eisai and Novartis/Amgen.
"Alzheimer's disease is one of the most difficult and unpleasant medical problems of our time. The development of effective drugs that can affect mild and moderate forms of the disease is a constant challenge. Studies like the EPOCH project are critically important, and we are indebted to the patients who took part in the work and their loved ones," said the head of the research laboratories Merck (Merck Research Laboratories) Dr. Roger Perlmutter (Roger Perlmutter). – Although we are disappointed that during this study it was not possible to detect the benefits of using a new tool, we continue to work with APECS. It is devoted to the study of the effectiveness of the drug verubecestat in patients at earlier stages of the disease."
Eli Lilly recently stopped phase III clinical trials of solanezumab on its own initiative. The work involved pre-dementia patients, that is, those with cognitive impairment were expressed slightly. The study of solanezumab in patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease ended in failure. After that, the company's experts had no reason to believe that solanezumab would help patients with milder forms of the disease.
The development of drugs to combat Alzheimer's disease is now extremely active. However, over the past 14 years, no drug has been approved for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease that can significantly change the lives of patients. New drugs one after another demonstrated their ineffectiveness, disappointing both doctors and patients and their loved ones.
Nevertheless, the results of the next phase III clinical trials dedicated to a new drug for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease are just around the corner. They may be the results of the work of the pharmaceutical company Axovant Sciences, specializing in the treatment of dementia. Axovant bought an experimental drug from GSK – after the drug failed in previous studies. However, the founder and head of Axovant Sciences Vivek Ramaswamy decided to make another attempt to introduce the drug into clinical practice.
The next remedy "on the way" is aducanumab (aducanumab), owned by Biogen. From the point of view of effectiveness, the drug looks very promising, however, as previous studies have shown, the safety of the drug raises a number of questions.
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17.02.2017