Roche's Alzheimer's drug spurred bio­mark­er changes but no cog­ni­tive im­pact — pa­per; vTv out-li­cens­es for­mer lead pro­gram

More than a year ago, Roche and Eli Lil­ly were forced to con­tend with a Phase II/III fail­ure of their re­spec­tive Alzheimer’s drugs. But while Eli Lil­ly es­sen­tial­ly threw in the tow­els, Roche wasn’t ready to give up yet.

The Swiss drug­mak­er now has some bio­mark­er da­ta to spot­light as in­ves­ti­ga­tors con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing pa­tients in an open-la­bel ex­ten­sion study.

Dubbed DI­AN-TU, the study had been de­signed to see whether Roche’s gan­tenerum­ab and Lil­ly’s solanezum­ab could spur a cog­ni­tive ben­e­fit for a group of pa­tients who had a rare, in­her­it­ed form of Alzheimer’s that’d tied to ear­ly-on­set. In short, they didn’t: Both failed the pri­ma­ry end­point.

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Life Sciences Senior Associate

General Catalyst

San Francisco, CA, USA