Actinogen Takes New Route to Treating Alzheimer’s

The Australian biotech company, Actinogen is launching a new attack on Alzheimer’s disease. The company is taking a new approach as opposed to the traditional treatment paths. This month the first of 174 patients on an international trial will be taking a drug to lessen the level of the stress hormone, cortisol, in the brain. There is evidence to suggest that this type of hormone is related and has some role within the Alzheimer’s. It’s not promoted as the sole cause of the disease but rather a contributing factor.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Currently research is underway to discover the few factors that combine to bring out Alzheimer’s and its proving cortisol may be one of them.
  • While reducing the levels of cortisol in the blood it is not difficult, reducing it in the brain has, until now, not been possible. The drug Xanamem, developed in Australia, can do this.
• The trial aims to use Xanamem, to lower cortisol in the brains of people with early mild Alzheimer’s and assess whether this can delay further deterioration.
• Cortisol is a relatively new target and Xanamem works differently to any drug in current use.
• Actinogen Medical is not alone in the cortisol space. It is in a race with a large Japanese pharmaceutical company and Dr Ketelbey suspects other researchers are on to it too.

“It will be the largest global Alzheimer’s dementia study conducted by an Australian biotech company,” says Dr Bill Ketelbey, CEO and managing director of the biotech Actinogen Medical.

“Alzheimer’s is one of those diseases where there has to be multiple shots on goals. We’ve got to keep attacking it from every direction because the disease is highly unlikely to have one ultimate therapy, “says Dr Ketelbey

“Rather than a magic bullet, there’s probably going to be a combination of therapies.

“And the more research we do, and the more failures we have, the better we understand the disease. Failures are crucial to success because they sharpen our focus.”

And there is an abundance of failures in Alzheimer’s research. In the decade to 2012, 244 compounds were reportedly investigated in 413 clinical trials.

Of these, only one was approved. That’s a success rate of 0.4 per cent.

The phase two trial, about to begin, will assess the safety, tolerability and efficacy of Xanamem for those with mild dementia due toAlzheimer’s.

Double blinded, placebo-controlled and randomised, the trial will follow patients for 12 weeks and be conducted at 20 research sites in Australia, Britain and the United States.

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