Results from Roche’s Phase Ib/IIa trial of new Alzheimer’s drug trontinemab were presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) in Toronto this week.
The trial, known as Brainshuttle™ AD, found nine in 10 people prescribed trontinemab experienced amyloid clearance within 28 weeks, meaning visible markers of disease had vanished. Roche announced its plans for Phase III studies to kick off this year in people with both early symptomatic and preclinical Alzheimer’s.
Here, UK DRI researchers comment on the news:
“This is great news. It sucks the plaque out of the brain really quickly, faster than we have seen with lecanemab or donanemab. This could be game-changing. We hope that if we can give these drugs to people early, we can halt the progression of disease, even before people have symptoms. Now we need to see the size of the clinical effect in phase 3 trials. These results show it could be faster and safer than previous drugs, which would mean less monitoring. That could bring down the costs significantly as it would mean fewer MRI scans, so that would hopefully mean it would get NICE approval.”
Prof Sir John Hardy, Group Leader at the UK DRI at UCL
Credit: Author Molly Andrews | UK Dementia Research Institute