Researchers from Alzheimer's disease have faced a series of frustrations in recent years as a promising compound after another flopped in clinical trials at an advanced stage. Unfortunately, the chain continues with the announcement today that another trial monitored closely for a drug called dimebon-failed.
Dimebon was something of a dark horse. An antihistamine introduced in Russia in 1983, it is placed in a screen for Alzheimer potential drugs and led to a clinical trial that gave remarkably encouraging results: In 08, the researchers reported in The Lancet that 78 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease who dimebon showed significant improvements in memory and cognition, as well as the ability to carry out the activities of daily life.
The new study was conducted by Medivation, a biopharmaceutical company based in San Francisco Californai, and Pfizer (who would have paid $ 225 million to license the drug). It registered light 598 patients with moderate Alzheimer's disease. This time, there were no significant differences between dimebon and placebo groups. "The results are unexpected ... and we are disappointed for the community to Alzheimer's," President and Chief Executive Officer of Medivation, David Hung said in a statement.
Some researchers studying Alzheimer's disease mechanisms are not surprised, though. "I think many of us have said the same thing ... it sounds too good to be true, but hopefully not for the benefit of patients" says Rudolph Tanzi of Harvard University. From the beginning, it was never clear why an antihistamine protect the brain from Alzheimer's disease, Tanzi and others say. "There was not a single bit of data published on the mechanism of action," says Sam Sisodia of the University of Chicago in Illinois. Several possible explanations have been advanced, Sisodia said, but in his opinion, the actions of the drug are not included well enough to justify a trial. "Just take the drugs in people just because you have an idea that might work is illogical," he said.
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