Unlike some of its peers, Anavex Life Sciences Corp. has toiled along the tortoise path to drug development with its lead candidate, the oral sigma-1 receptor (S1R) agonist ANAVEX-2-73, in early Alzheimer's disease (AD). For more than a decade, the New York-based company has bet that compounds for AD based on its discovery platform will have competitive advantages over candidates based on the amyloid beta approach, which hypothesizes that plaques in the brain cause the disease. (See BioWorld Today, May 6, 2008.)