Phase 2a study of patients with Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s finds that ANVS401 treatment leads to significant improvement in speed and accuracy.
Annovis Bio Inc, a clinical-stage drug platform company addressing Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD) and other neurodegenerative diseases, has announced that in a test that measures speed, AD and PD patients both respond with a statistically significant increase in correctly-coded fields after 25 days of treatment with ANVS401. The test was part of the company’s ongoing Phase 2a study in AD and PD patients.
Longevity.Technology: Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s are both devastating neurological diseases, with large numbers of researchers working on diagnosing and delaying them. Headquartered in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, Annovis Bio is a clinical-stage, drug platform company that is in the unusual position of developing a drug for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s that inhibits more than one neurotoxic protein and, thereby, improves the information highway of the nerve cell, known as axonal transport. When this information flow is impaired, the nerve cell gets sick and dies. Annovis expects its treatment to improve memory loss and dementia associated with Alzheimer’s, as well as body and brain function in Parkinson’s. Annovis has two ongoing Phase 2a studies: one in Alzheimer’s patients and one in both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s patients.
“Our hypothesis states that neurodegenerative diseases, such as AD and PD have many commonalities and that in both diseases nerve cells die through similar pathways,” said Annovis Bio CEO Maria Maccecchini, PhD. “That is why we designed a double study, where we are measuring the same markers of the toxic cascade in both diseases. We also measured the coding scale of the WAIS test in both patient groups.”
The WAIS Coding Scale measures visual-motor dexterity, associative nonverbal learning, and nonverbal short-term memory. It measures fine-motor dexterity, speed, accuracy and ability to manipulate a pencil and perceptual organization.
Annovis Bio found that speed and accuracy was increased in both patient populations of its Phase 2a study, whether the comparison was made between the same patients before and after treatment or between the placebo and ANVS401 treated groups at 25 days. These data are from the first 14 AD and the first 14 PD patients in the study.
Parkinson’s disease – comparison between the treated group with 80 mg/day of ANVS401 at baseline before treatment and after 25 days on treatment and between placebo and treated group at 25 days in the rapid coding test. At 25 days the speed and accuracy of the treated group is faster than at baseline and the patients on average coded 6.1 more correct fields (p<0.05). Also, at 25 days placebo performs worse than drug treated (p<0.05). To summarize the PD results, the two graphs show that while the placebo gets worse, the treated group gets faster.
Alzheimer’s disease – comparison between the treated group with 80 mg/day of ANVS401 at baseline before treatment and after 25 days on treatment and between placebo and treated group at 25 days in the rapid coding test. At 25 days the speed of the treated group is faster than at baseline and the patients on average coded 6.6 more correct fields (p<0.05). Also, at 25 days placebo performs worse than drug treated (trend). To summarize the AD results, the two graphs show that while the placebo gets slightly better, the treated group gets much faster.
“This is one additional piece of information that confirms the data from our Phase 2a study and shows that ANVS401 is efficacious in both AD and PD,” said Dr Maccecchini.
