United Neuroscience inches closer to Alzheimer’s vaccine prize

A vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease developed by United Neuroscience has cleared a phase IIa trial and seems to be free of the toxicity that has scuppered earlier candidates. To be clear, there’s no solid evidence yet that United’s UB-311 candidate has an impact on cognition and memory in Alzheimer’s patients yet. Nevertheless, the lack of serious side effects is a big step forward in a vaccine development effort that extends back almost 20 years. Top-line data from the 42-patient study show that the synthetic peptide vaccine – which targets beta amyloid – was well-tolerated in subjects mild Alzheimer’s disease at the two doses studied, and also stimulated anti-amyloid antibodies in 96% of patients – meeting the two primary objectives.
There were also trends towards improvement on all secondary measures, including amyloid deposits in the brain measured using PET, as well as Alzheimer’s symptoms using scales such as the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cog (ADAS-Cog) and Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE). Those early signs are encouraging, although the company isn’t suggesting there is evidence of an efficacy signal yet, the absence of toxicity means that UB-311 is on course to put that to the test in large-scale studies.