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news.Anavex Life Sciences has responded to the new diagnostic criteria and guidelines that describe Alzheimer’s disease at a preclinical stage, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) due to Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia due to Alzheimer’s pathology.
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The new guidelines, updated for the first time in more than 25 years, discuss the importance of new technologies, including brain imaging and biomarker analysis, in research and clinical diagnosis.
The guidelines state that even though some older people did not demonstrate clinical signs of Alzheimer’s disease during their lives, they are found to have amyloid-beta plaques in their brain at autopsy.
In recent decades researchers have focused their efforts on amyloid-beta plaques and several of the drug candidates have failed in clinical trials.
Anavex Clinical Development & Medical Affairs VP Angelos Stergiou said while it has been shown that amyloid deposits likely begin early in the disease process, it seems that loss of neurons occurs at a later stage and may accelerate just before clinical symptoms appear.
"Tackling upstream causes early in the disease process as we are doing with ANAVEX 2-73, our lead drug candidate currently in Phase I clinical trials, could prove to be an important strategy which may potentially even be a preventive approach," Stergiou said.
"Furthermore, we plan on enrolling patients with MCI due to Alzheimer’s and will perform biomarker tests as we feel this type of approach will become the benchmark for the diagnosis of this debilitating disease."