Axon Neuroscience announces positive results from Phase II trial for a cure to Alzheimer’s Disease – Alzheimer’s Society comment

The Phase II ADAMANT trial was designed as a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial in mild Alzheimer’s Disease. The primary objective was safety, with secondary objectives to evaluate immunogenicity, efficacy on clinical outcomes and key biomarkers.

Axon studied AADvac1 on 196 patients in eight European countries over 24 months, in order to prove the concept of disease modifying effect of the vaccine and to inform the design of future confirmatory studies.

Dr James Pickett, Head of Research at Alzheimer’s Society, said:

'We have seen the failure of many amyloid targeting drugs for Alzheimer’s over the past few years, so all eyes are on tau to see if targeting it could help stave off the condition.

'This isn’t the first drug designed to clear tau protein from the brain to enter clinical trials, but it is the first active vaccine to reach this stage of a clinical trial. And being active means it’s capable of triggering a stronger and long lasting immune response than passive vaccines.'

'The results suggest the mechanics of the drug are working, but we shouldn’t get too excited as we’ve seen this before in early trials of drugs, that have then turned out to fail.  We now know that the drug is safe, can activate the immune system and may have positive effects in this small group of people. What we need now is large-scale trials which will have the power to find out whether this drug could be capable of slowing down Alzheimer’s. Research will beat dementia, but we need funding to make it happen.'