BOSTON—A phase III study of bapineuzumab indicates that the drug does not provide significant clinical benefit for patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease, researchers reported at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Neurological Association. However, promising biomarker findings may provide the foundation for future studies of antiamyloid therapies, according to lead researcher Reisa A. Sperling, MD.
“We saw evidence of amyloid lowering, or at least differences over the course of the trial, and also evidence that we hit a key marker in spinal fluid, which is phosphorylated tau,” Dr. Sperling, Director of the Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told Neurology Reviews.
She added, “It was disappointing that we didn’t see a clinical signal, and this dissociation between having biologic activity without clinical benefit is really problematic for the field.”
Dr. Sperling noted that the bapineuzumab studies have yielded a wealth of data to analyze.
“Hopefully, these new biomarker results from the bapineuzumab studies, together with the clinical results from the solanezumab studies, may provide a potential path forward for Alzheimer’s disease research.”
—Lauren LeBano