Martin Tolar, Alzheon CEO

'Very over sol­d': Biotech brags about PhII Alzheimer's da­ta, but ex­perts are un­der­whelmed

In a field now de­fined by Bio­gen’s Aduhelm — and the storm of con­tro­ver­sy around it — what con­sti­tutes “in­dus­try-lead­ing” da­ta for an Alzheimer’s drug?

Alzheon, a lit­tle biotech de­vel­op­ing an oral amy­loid-clear­ing tablet, is tak­ing a stab at it.

Re­port­ing six-month da­ta from a Phase II bio­mark­er tri­al in­volv­ing 84 pa­tients, Alzheon an­nounced that ALZ-801, or valil­tramiprosate, spurred a 29% re­duc­tion in a bio­mark­er called plas­ma p-tau181 — which it said is sev­en-fold greater than that trig­gered by oth­er an­ti-amy­loid an­ti­bod­ies. Paired with “sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment” in a mem­o­ry test while not spec­i­fy­ing how much, the num­bers val­i­date its ap­proach and of­fer “a clear path for­ward with our mol­e­cules,” ac­cord­ing to CEO Mar­tin To­lar.

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