Cau­tious­ly op­ti­mistic, AC Im­mune de­liv­ers a mixed set of Alzheimer's da­ta — but in­vestors love it

Swiss biotech AC Im­mune is trad­ing sharply high­er Tues­day morn­ing fol­low­ing the re­lease of mixed topline Alzheimer’s da­ta.

First, the good news: In a dou­ble-blind­ed and ran­dom­ized Phase II study, AC Im­mune’s tau-tar­get­ing mon­o­clon­al an­ti­body met a pri­ma­ry end­point show­ing the can­di­date slowed cog­ni­tive de­cline at a sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant rate in mild-to-mod­er­ate Alzheimer’s pa­tients com­pared to place­bo. It’s the first time an an­ti-tau an­ti­body has shown a ther­a­peu­tic ef­fect in Alzheimer’s, the com­pa­ny says, and the first-ever an­ti­body to show an im­pact on cog­ni­tion in this pop­u­la­tion.

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