Bio­gen, Ei­sai un­veil new da­ta on lecanemab, but ques­tions linger on ARIA-E; Spa­tial bi­ol­o­gy out­fit grabs $33M round

Ei­sai and Bio­gen have re­leased more da­ta on lecanemab, an­oth­er an­ti-Alzheimer’s drug in the part­ner­ship that spawned ad­u­canum­ab. How­ev­er, ques­tions about the da­ta re­main when look­ing at ARIA-E events, with the typ­i­cal caveat of cross-tri­al com­par­isons.

The da­ta from lecanemab’s Phase IIb study were pre­sent­ed at the an­nu­al AD/PD meet­ing, and the ra­tio of ARIA-E — a type of amy­loid-re­lat­ed imag­ing ab­nor­mal­i­ties re­sult­ing in brain bleeds — ap­peared high­er than in Aduhelm stud­ies when com­pared to place­bo. Two tri­als on the high­ly con­tro­ver­sial drug, EN­GAGE and EMERGE, showed an ARIA-E rate of 41%, com­pared to 10% in the place­bo arm. That was a 4:1 ra­tio.

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