Bio­gen, Ei­sai BACE drug cuts amy­loid be­ta in the brain, but there’s no hard da­ta to show it does any­thing im­por­tant for cog­ni­tion

Just af­ter Mer­ck $MRK re­search raised se­ri­ous doubts about the BACE ap­proach to tack­ling Alzheimer’s dis­ease, re­searchers for Bio­gen $BI­IB and Ei­sai are fight­ing against the tide this week. And they have a long way to go be­fore they start per­suad­ing they may have some­thing of val­ue for pa­tients.

The team fo­cused on the oral BACE drug elen­be­ce­s­tat says the drug is do­ing what it’s in­tend­ed to do, cut­ting down on the amount of amy­loid be­ta in the brains of pa­tients with a mild form of the dis­ease and pro­duc­ing a nu­mer­i­cal de­cline in the rate at which pa­tients’ cog­ni­tion spi­rals down­ward.

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