The ultimate failure
Merck has stopped developing a drug for Alzheimer's disease
The world's oldest pharmaceutical company Merck has announced the termination of clinical trials of its drug for Alzheimer's disease – verubecestat, the effectiveness of which was planned to be shown at an early stage of the course of the disease.
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases are neurodegenerative diseases, that is, they gradually destroy the brain and nervous system, which leads to the destruction of a person's personality. They mainly affect the elderly, and as the world's population ages, these diseases can become a reality for millions of people. In 2017, a trial of verubecestat, Merck's drug for a moderate form of dementia, ended in failure, and then experts suggested that the company had a chance to show the effectiveness of the drug if it was applied to patients at the earliest possible stage of the disease.
In 2018, the largest company Pfizer announced the termination of the search for a cure for this disease .
Merck has started a study on 1,400 patients with a moderate form of Alzheimer's disease, in which memory is already deteriorating, but dementia is not progressing yet. However, these tests also did not show a significant result, and on February 13, Merck announced the termination of clinical trials of verubecestat at an early stage, since the drug "literally has no chance of success," reports the medical journal STAT.
According to the publication, the failure of the verubecestat tests indicates the failure of the hypothesis, according to which scientists should detect the first symptoms of the disease as early as possible in order to overcome its devastating consequences. This is also a blow to the amyloid hypothesis of the origin of Alzheimer's disease, according to which neurodegenerative effects are a consequence of the accumulation of insoluble protein particles in the brain, the so–called amyloid plaques.
Verubecestat was developed to block the enzyme BACE (beta-secretase), which plays an important role in the production of dangerous amyloid proteins. This should have stopped neurodegeneration. In trials, the drug gave a two percent reduction in amyloid plaques in the brain at low doses and a four percent reduction at high doses, and this result is still better than the placebo effect.
Therefore, BACE research has another chance: Merck's partner companies - Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca – plan to publish test data with the same molecule as in verubecestate in 2019. A separate study is currently being conducted on patients over the age of 60 who have already detected amyloids in their brains, but the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease are still manifested in the mildest form. They will receive another BACE enzyme inhibitor developed at Johnson & Johnson. The study involves more than 1,600 patients, and it will last until 2024.
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