Trou­bled AB Sci­ence claims break­out Alzheimer's suc­cess while vTv flops — again

Two drugs aimed at treat­ing Alzheimer’s dis­ease by tamp­ing down in­flam­ma­tion have racked up com­plete­ly op­po­site re­sults in Phase II tri­als — shin­ing a light on both the be­wil­der­ing­ly oner­ous task of com­ing up with a treat­ment for the neu­rode­gen­er­a­tive dis­ease and the lit­tle biotech play­ers ea­ger to take ad­van­tage of that gap.

The flop of vTv Ther­a­peu­tics comes as lit­tle sur­prise as the same drug, azeli­ragon, had failed a piv­otal study two years ago. The High Point, NC-based com­pa­ny had found a sil­ver lin­ing from a sub­group analy­sis and start­ed a new tri­al with mild Alzheimer’s and type 2 di­a­betes pa­tients, but the drug failed to im­prove cog­ni­tion in the 6-month study.

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