New Alzheimer's Drug Shows Promise

An anonymous reader writes "The Herald Sun is reporting that researchers may have some progress to report on the Alzheimer's front. A new drug, called PBT2, was developed by a Melbourne-based biotech firm that has been showing some promising results. From the article: 'Early clinical testing has confirmed the drug is fast-acting. Levels of amyloid dropped by 60 per cent within 24 hours of a single dose. It found also that PBT2 suppresses the impairment of memory function. More human studies begin in Sweden next month and Australians will join a major international trial of the drug next year.'"

Comments

Mad Cow Disease Link?

[walnutmon]

I have heard linkages between alzheimers and "mad cow disease", I wonder if this drug will be able to fix both problems. I can finally start eating all cows indiscriminately!!!

Re:animal data not clinical trials?

[Unc-70]

On the other hand if you take a look at the pdf linked on the homepage (pdf warning), you will see that it is a clinical trial designed to assess both safety and efficacy. It's pretty small numbers though (18 completers) and the efficacy is assesed by cognition tests. There's certainly no mention of amyloid reduction so that may well refer to the animal studies.

Promises, schmomises

[hahn]

Is it just me or does it seem like every few months, the healthcare media pops up an article about some newfangled treatment that shows "promise" for some disease that everyone knows about? And is it me again, or do we almost never hear about these promising treatments years later? The cynic in me would say that it smells like someone trying to drum up some investment money. What's that? Prana Biotechnologies is listed on the Nasdaq as "PRAN"? And the announcement hit the media before the Monday opening bell? I'm shocked.

Sadly, the less cynical part of me wonders why we only ever read articles about drugs that show "promise"? When was the last time we saw an article titled "Cure for Disease Found!"? And no, I don't have Alzheimers. I honestly can't recall.

The problem with this drug is that its promise is based on 2 assumptions:
1) that amyloid has a causal role in Alzheimers
2) lowering amyloid will halt or reverse Alzheimers

Given that we don't actually know that either is true, we really have no idea how good the promise of this drug is. What we DO know is that promises have made a lot of pharmaceutical companies and their management very very very rich. Not that I would begrudge them that if they actually come through with a halfway effective drug. But I also think there should be penalties for putting out media announcements and raising false hopes without even having tested it out on a single human being yet.

Re:Promises, schmomises

[shaneh0]

I'm sorry if your post was inspired by some personal tragedy. It reads to me like maybe it was. You feel personally let-down by the pharm industry. Because your argument seems founded much more in emotion then it is in fact.

The fact is that over the last 50 years the pharmaceutical industry has made some incredible breakthroughs. And every single one of those drugs was, at some point, at this stage in development.

The truth is that developing new drugs is VERY capital-intensive. They NEED to keep investors primed-up. It could take 20 years of huge investments before seeing a single $1 in revenue.

The truth is that human chemistry is one of the most complicated problem-domains faced by large commercial enterprise. You don't see many announcements saying "We Cured X Disease!" because it's rarely that simple. A drug might cure a disease in one part of the population, have no effect in a second part, and actually make it WORSE for a third.

My point is that pharma companies have made tremendous breakthroughs. Look at AIDS for example. People contracting HIV today might NEVER be diagnosed with AIDS. In fact, a person contracting HIV today has almost an equal chance of dying of another, non-related illness then from an immunodeficiency-related illness. This is a disease that wasn't even diagnosed 30 years ago.

I'm sorry, but the idea that someone should be penalized for "false hopes" -- essentially conclusions that the reader might jump to--is just REDICULOUS. Perhaps if you read that a drug hasn't been tested on a human yet, you should refrain from feeling false hope? Can we not get an amen for a little personal responsibility?

EVERY SINGLE BUSINESS issues forward-looking statements. OF COURSE a phrama company is going to do the same.

I gotta stop, here. It would take me far too long to enumerate all of your asinine points. Let's all just reduce ourselves to /. drivel. M$ == BigPhrama == The DEVIL! Companies are EVIL and BAD! We should all quit out jobs and write OSS and live in a barter economy! Punish the big companies for making me think wrong thoughts!

Puh-Leese. Companies in most industries would laugh you out of the room if you suggested risking BILLIONS in capital on a product that could take DECADES to develop and years longer to push thru a byzantine regulation process, and guess what: Even then it still might not ever produce a DIME in revenue, let alone break even.

restore memories, or restore memory?

[tompee]

I wonder (and perhaps someone with more education than I can speculate), if amyloid concetrations in the brain are reduced, will the patients be able to remember things that they have forgotten, or will they "just" be capable of remembering new information again?

Re:Major news for nursing homes

[Nocterro]

The sad thing is that with proper building design, it's possible to make life much better for people with severe dementia. Many people react like your father-in-law because they don't understand why they're not allowed to leave. Another nursing home run by the same organisation I work for was built a few years ago with a specific dementia ward, and apparently it's much better for the residents. By most places where there have to be closed doors, they've eliminated much of the points for someone to focus on. The ward is designed as a circle with a garden breaking the ring, and the only entrance/exit is from the garden. Most people with severe dementia will wander in circles, getting distracted by the garden or other points. If you google for it there's actually been a lot of research done over the last fifteen years into caring for people with dementia, but that takes a while to filter into actual nursing homes. We're knocking our facility down and rebuilding sometime in the next five years, hopefully with some better design principles for the people we're handling.