Bayer collaborates with AC Immune in Alzheimers research
Bayer Schering Pharma, Germany will provide its florbetaben development candidate, a so-called PET (positron emission tomography) tracer, to the Swiss-based biopharmaceutical company AC Immune, to support a clinical trial for Alzheimer\'s disease.
Bayer Schering Pharma, Germany will provide its florbetaben development candidate, a so-called PET (positron emission tomography) tracer, to the Swiss-based biopharmaceutical company AC Immune, to support a clinical trial for Alzheimer's disease.
This study aims to develop a new therapy for the treatment of Alzheimer's, testing florbetaben for the first time. Florbetaben will be applied for the imaging of beta-Amyloid deposition in the brain of patients undergoing phase I clinical testing of AC Immune's Alzheimer's vaccine ACI-24.
"Bayer Schering Pharma has already demonstrated the potential of florbetaben to image beta-Amyloid deposition in the brain in its own phase II study," said Dr Thomas Balzer, head of global clinical development in therapeutic area diagnostic imaging at Bayer Schering Pharma.
"The co-operation with AC Immune enables the collection of valuable clinical data for florbetaben in patients treated with AC Immune's novel therapeutic vaccine."
There is currently no available diagnostic test that can detect beta-Amyloid deposition in the brain - a pathological hallmark of Alzheimer's disease - in a patient's lifetime. Today, the clinical diagnosis of Alzheimer's is based on cognitive tests, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Computerised Tomography (CT) scans to exclude other dementia diseases. Unfortunately, clinical diagnosis is often made too late and does not always correlate with post-mortem diagnosis. A good diagnostic assay should help to evaluate the effect of new treatments in clinical trials as well as correlate better with existing pathological and memory markers.
A new diagnostic tool to detect beta-Amyloid in the brain in vivo might also be beneficial in detecting the disease earlier, before the symptoms are too advanced so treatment could be started earlier, the company says.
