Connections, Susan Greenfield told her audience at the 2022 Annual Conference of the European Academy of Neurology, are what the mind is all about. "When you are born, you are born with a fair amount of neurons," she said at the conference's opening plenary on Sunday. But "what characterizes the growth of the brain postnatally is the configurations of connections."
Axsome Therapeutics Inc. and the U.S. FDA appear to be working out their differences. The company said it received the proposed labeling from the agency for AXS-05 (dextromethorphan + bupropion), an oral NMDA receptor antagonist with multimodal activity, for treating major depressive disorder.
Uniqure NV rolled out stock-pleasing safety and biomarker data from 10 patients enrolled in the low-dose cohort of the ongoing phase I/II trial with AMT-130 for the treatment of Huntington’s disease (HD), but investors must wait for details on MRI scans. “We have communicated that we will discuss the MRI findings in the middle of next year,” CEO Matt Kapusta told investors during a conference call. “That’s all I can say.”
Shares of Athira Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ:ATHA) plunged almost 66.3%, or $5.60, to close at $2.85 on June 22 after the company disclosed top-line results from its exploratory phase II study with fosgonimeton (ATH-1017, fosgo) in mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Ionis Pharmaceuticals Inc. and Astrazeneca plc, partners on the antisense oligonucleotide inhibitor eplontersen, said interim phase III data showed the candidate had a positive impact on disease progression in patients with hereditary transthyretin-mediated amyloid polyneuropathy, giving them confidence to plan for a U.S. FDA NDA filing in the indication before the end of 2022.
The U.S. FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee took up the complicated matter of Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s sNDA for Nuplazid (pimavanserin) to treat hallucinations and delusions associated with Alzheimer’s disease psychosis (ADP).
Shares in Addex Therapeutics Ltd. (Zurich:ADXN) dropped 48% June 17 on news that the company had terminated a pivotal phase IIb/III study of dipraglurant as a potential treatment for dyskinesia in Parkinson’s disease.
Alzheimer’s experts have suggested that future research may involve combination therapies after yet another trial failure involving a drug targeting amyloid – in this case Roche Holding AG’s crenezumab. Originally discovered by Swiss biotech AC Immune SA, of Lausanne, crenezumab failed to slow or prevent cognitive decline in people with a certain mutation that causes early onset in a closely watched trial.
The FDA’s Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee posted briefing documents related to the June 17 meeting, set to consider Acadia Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s sNDA for Nuplazid (pimavanserin) to treat hallucinations and delusions associated with Alzheimer’s disease psychosis (ADP). Although shares of the San Diego-based firm (NASDAQ:ACAD) stayed in the black, closing at $18.77, up $2.52, or 15.5%, the briefing docs did not bring uniformly good news, echoing some of the concerns spelled out in an earlier complete response letter.
Following a negative phase II/III study of an investigational treatment for major depressive disorder, Praxis Precision Medicines Inc. is dropping staff from the payroll and refocusing the company’s resources on tremor and epilepsy. The Aria study of PRAX-114, a positive allosteric modulator extrasynaptic GABA receptor, missed its primary endpoint, statistical significance as measured on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale. It also missed the study’s secondary endpoints.
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