Biogen's Alzheimer's drug diranersen matches approved therapies in slowing cognitive decline

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LONDON — An experimental Alzheimer’s drug from Biogen, designed with a novel approach, slowed patients’ cognitive decline in a mid-stage trial at roughly comparable rates as approved medicines, new data that bolstered the company’s case to move the treatment into a Phase 3 trial.

Although experts will wait to see the pivotal trial data before making their final assessments of the drug, called diranersen, the results from the Phase 2 trial, if backed up in the larger study, could rekindle the debate about how strong trial results have to be to signify that a drug can offer meaningful benefits for patients and caregivers.

Still, Alzheimer’s specialists said they believed the drug was having an effect on disease progression given that different doses of diranersen led to improvements in patient performance on a number of tests compared to placebo. The drug also demonstrated an ability to lower the levels of a protein called tau, which forms toxic tangles in the brain and is associated with memory loss and the onset of other symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

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