There is one more loser in the Alzheimer's disease field.

On November 25, Cassava Sciences announced that the Phase III ReThink-ALZ study of Simufilam for the treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD) did not meet the pre-set dual primary endpoints, secondary endpoints, and exploratory biomarker endpoints. Affected by this news, Cassava Sciences' stock price fell 84% that day.

It seems that this may be expected. Cassava Sciences has been in great controversy because of controversies such as paper data falsification.

But in any case, this still highlights the difficulty of treating Alzheimer's disease.

Simufilam is an oral small molecule drug targeting misconstructed filament protein A (FLNA). FLNA is a scaffold protein that normally exists in cells. The toxic form of amyloid beta, Aβ42, can induce changes in its structure, and the misconstructed FLNA can promote the activation of the Aβ42-α7 acetylcholine receptor signaling pathway and the Aβ42-Toll-like receptor 4 signaling pathway, leading to the production of phosphorylated tau protein and inflammatory factors. Therefore, FLNA, Aβ protein, and tau protein are considered to be the three major culprits of AD.

From a mechanism point of view, Simufilam can bind to misconstructed FLNA, restore its normal structure and function, and prevent the diseased FLNA from activating the Aβ42-α7nAChR signaling pathway and the Aβ42-TLR4 signaling pathway, thereby reducing the occurrence of neurodegenerative diseases and neuroinflammation.

Simufilam is currently the only FLNA targeted drug in the field of AD. Today, the failure of its research also reminds the market that it may need to re-examine the development of Alzheimer's drugs from more dimensions.

https://mp.weixin.qq.com/