A
biotech startup is seeing promising results in the early stages of trials for a
new vaccine
by Considerable
Staff | January 25, 2019
Alzheimer’s has long
been one of thorniest problems in pharmaceutical research, with companies
pouring millions into research with limited success to show for it. But that
may finally be changing.
Biotech companies
have been experimenting with various vaccines to combat Alzheimer’s, but often
those experiments have led to terrible side effects.
United
Neuroscience Ltd., a biotech startup based in Dublin, recently
released the results of a small clinical trial of UB-311, a new vaccine it’s
developing to help combat Alzheimer’s disease—and so far, according to reporting by Bloomberg, the results have been
positive.
It’s very early
days—the drug is only in Phase 2 of its clinical trial, and the pool of patients involved in the study
is quite small (only 43 individuals with “mild Alzheimer’s disease” were
included). But despite the trial’s modest size and findings, the researchers
remain tentatively optimistic. “We can’t make any claims yet,” Mei Mei Hu, the
CEO of United Neuroscience told Bloomberg, “but we’re pointing in all the right directions.”
Scientists still
don’t know exactly what causes Alzheimer’s, but there’s evidence to suggest
that the disease is exacerbated by inflammation in the brain—which is sometimes
caused by proteins, particularly of the amyloid or tau family, that build up in
the body and around neurons.
UB-311 is a little
different than your standard vaccine.
For the past two
decades, biotech companies have been experimenting with various vaccines to
combat Alzheimer’s, but often those experiments have led to terrible side
effects. Patients’ bodies have resisted treatment, launching immune responses
that have led to severe brain swelling and impairment. That’s because, for the
most part, traditional vaccines are meant to target infectious diseases, which
come from pathogens outside the body—like the flu, or polio.
But UB-311 is a
little different than your standard vaccine. UB-311 is what the researchers
refer to as an endobody vaccine, meaning that it has been designed to target a
substance—in this case, amyloid proteins—produced by the body. The goal of such
a vaccine would be to enable the body “to develop its own defense agents of
chronic disease,” as United Neuroscience’s website explains.
The Phase 2 of
UB-311’s trial showed that 96% of patients responded to the drug without any
serious side effects. On top of that, patients demonstrated improved brain
function, and protein plaque found on their neurons was reduced.
While the cure for
Alzheimer’s is still a very long way off, these results are encouraging. Next,
the company is planning a third phase of testing for UB-311, which will involve
widening the scope of study and increasing the number of participants.
United Neuroscience
also has two other ambitious trials in works: one targeting tau, the other
family of proteins associated with Alzheimer’s, and one for UB-312, a vaccine
aimed at fighting Parkinson’s disease.
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