Roche is bring­ing back gan­tenerum­ab from the dead, tak­ing an­oth­er stab at Alzheimer’s PhI­II

Alzheimer’s drugs are ex­pen­sive to test and un­like­ly to suc­ceed, but they are al­so hard to kill.

More than two years af­ter gan­tenerum­ab failed de­ci­sive­ly in treat­ing ear­ly-stage Alzheimer’s, Roche is map­ping out an at­tempt­ed come­back through a new, piv­otal Phase III pro­gram that puts them back in­to the late-stage pipeline with their sec­ond ther­a­py.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors stub­born­ly vowed back at an in­ter­na­tion­al Alzheimer’s con­fer­ence in 2015 that if you amped up the dosage of the amy­loid be­ta an­ti­body it would be pos­si­ble to track a re­al treat­ment ef­fect for Alzheimer’s, im­prov­ing cog­ni­tion and func­tion. And now Roche part­ner Mor­phoSys, which con­tributed its plat­form tech in dis­cov­er­ing the drug, says the phar­ma gi­ant is go­ing for it — again.

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