What happened
The fight against Alzheimer's disease seems to be advancing, and one biotech developing a treatment for the degenerative brain disorder benefited from this on Monday.
This was Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY -0.28%), which saw its share price rise by nearly 3% on the day thanks to encouraging news from an early-stage clinical trial of an investigational Alzheimer's drug. By comparison, the S&P 500 index only crept 0.4% higher.
So what
Alnylam published the interim results of a phase 1 study of its ALN-APP concurrent with a presentation made by the biotech at an Alzheimer's conference in the Netherlands. ALN-APP not only addresses Alzheimer's but also cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA), an affliction in which certain proteins accumulate in the arteries located in the brain.
The company said that the single doses of ALN-APP were well tolerated in the 20-patient trial, and all adverse events were mild to moderate in terms of severity. More importantly, they showed "a rapid and sustained reduction in cerebrospinal fluid" of amyloid precursor protein (APP).
Alnylam quoted Dr. Sharon Cohen, neurologist and medical director of the Toronto Memory Program, as explaining that "We've known for decades that mutations that increase APP production, or alter its proteolysis, cause early onset Alzheimer's disease, early onset CAA or both."
Therefore, that reduction in the protein bodes well for ALN-APP.
Now what
Alnylam's good news coincides with that from a more high-profile Alzheimer's experimental drug, Eli Lilly's donanemab. Also on Monday, Eli Lilly unveiled a full set of results from a phase 3 trial of its medication. These revealed, in the company's words, that patients "significantly slowed cognitive and functional decline in people with early symptomatic Alzheimer's disease (AD)."
It's very possible we're on the way to triumphing over the scourge that is Alzheimer's. While it's early days, it seems as if Alnylam might be one of the companies leading the victory parade.
