Up­dat­ed: Athi­ra plots an Alzheimer's come­back af­ter scan­dal, PhII fail — and hints at pos­si­ble ac­cel­er­at­ed ap­proval pitch

Athi­ra Phar­ma built up high hopes for its al­ter­na­tive ap­proach to de­vel­op­ing Alzheimer’s treat­ments, but a scan­dal in­volv­ing doc­tored im­ages, a very pub­lic board fight and a Phase II fail took the wind out of its sails. On Tues­day, the com­pa­ny out­lined an at­tempt­ed path for­ward.

Fol­low­ing an ex­plorato­ry study look­ing at long-term ef­fects that re­searchers note al­so failed its pri­ma­ry goal, Athi­ra plans to amend its Phase II tri­al and in­clude new mea­sure­ments on cog­ni­tion, func­tion and neu­rode­gen­er­a­tion. The pri­ma­ry end­point will re­main the same, but Athi­ra will close­ly scru­ti­nize its drug, fos­go­nime­ton, in pa­tients who aren’t us­ing an­oth­er kind of ther­a­py to treat Alzheimer’s-re­lat­ed de­men­tia.

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