New Alzheimer’s Drug Disappoints

Dimebon, a potential Alzheimer’s drug, has been one of the most talked about drugs this year. Originally developed by scientists in Russia in the 1980s for use as an antihistamine, Dimebon turned up years later as a potential Alzheimer’s drug in research performed in Chernogolovka, Russia. Research by the Russians into the potential use of Dimebon for Alzheimer’s disease looked so promising that a well-known biotech investor, David Hung, created a company called Medivation to develop the drug. With the financial backing of Medivation, a much larger clinical trial was performed, the results from which were remarkably positive and thoroughly exciting. Based on those results, Medivation put some of the rights to the drug up for sale, and a bidding war ensued. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer won the war and paid $225 million for partial ownership of the intellectual property rights associated with Dimebon.

Now the drug is in Phase III clinical trials and the medical and scientific communities have had high hopes for its success. Unfortunately, the results of two of the Phase III clinical trials for Dimebon were released last week and are quite disappointing. The studies indicate that Dimebon was hardly better than a placebo in treating Alzheimer’s disease. These findings represent a radical departure from the results of the previous clincial trial performed by Medivation.

Right now, the lead researchers of the trial are scratching their heads and trying to reconcile these radically different results. Additional clinical trials are ongoing and the results from those will hopefully shed light on this conundrum.

In the meantime, we imagine that Pfizer is feeling like it jumped the gun on investing in this particular drug candidate, especially since none of the researchers could offer a plausible, biochemical rationale for how an antihistamine was treating a neurodegenerative disease.

Photo Source: http://www.chm.bris.ac.uk

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