Allon Therapeutics Inc. announced findings that 12 weeks of treatment with davunetide, the company’s lead product, appears to prevent cortical thinning of important parts of the brains of schizophrenia patients.
“The new data are consistent with the neuroprotective effect we have seen with davunetide including our other human trials and provide further confirmation of the strategy behind our ongoing Phase 2/3 pivotal study in progressive supranuclear palsy,” says Bruce Morimoto, MD, Allon’s vice-president of drug development.
Morimoto said the data emerged from the ongoing analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data by a group of scientists and physicians led by Jeffrey Lieberman, MD, chairman of the department of psychiatry at Columbia University School of Physicians and Surgeons, and director of the New York Psychiatric Institute.
“The new data showed that in the 23 patient-study the thickness of the cortex in specific regions of the brain decreased in the eight schizophrenia patients given placebo, whereas it did not change in the 15 patients treated with davunetide.” The cortex is tissue in the human brain made up of neuronal cell bodies. “While these data come from a small exploratory study, they suggest that davunetide treatment prevents the cortical thinning observed in schizophrenia”, Morimoto adds.
“In our lab, we found that the cortex of schizophrenia patients is thinner than that of healthy control subjects. The extent and rate of cortical thinning in the davunetide study is similar to what we have seen previously in placebo-treated subjects,” says Lieberman.
The analyses showed that the greatest treatment effect was seen in the dorsolateral prefrontal and temporal cortical regions of the brain. These areas are known to be impacted in cognitive-impairment associated with schizophrenia (CIAS).
Davunetide treatment produced a statistically significant increase in N-acetylaspartate (NAA), a putative marker of neuronal integrity known to decline in several neurodegenerative disorders including schizophrenia.
Release Date: July 19, 2011
Source: Allon Therapeutics Inc.
Filed Under: Drug Discovery
