Cor­texyme low­ers dose amid safe­ty con­cerns, rais­ing ques­tions about fu­ture of off­beat Alzheimer’s ap­proach

Late last month, Cor­texyme an­nounced a sub­set of pa­tients saw their cog­ni­tive de­cline slow while tak­ing the high dose of the com­pa­ny’s ex­per­i­men­tal Alzheimer’s drug, of­fer­ing some sup­port for an out­side-the-box ap­proach to treat­ing the dis­ease.

But on Thurs­day the biotech re­vealed it would push for­ward with a low­er dose of the mol­e­cule be­cause of liv­er tox­i­c­i­ty con­cerns in the re­cent tri­al. Al­though the re­duced quan­ti­ty — 40 mg as op­posed to 80 mg — ap­peared safer, it al­so ap­peared less ef­fec­tive, po­ten­tial­ly set­ting up a rocky path to­ward any pos­si­ble ap­proval.

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