Cambridge Cognition hoping to ride coat-tails of Biogen Alzheimer's programme

Cambridge Cognition announced on Friday that, Following a consultation with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Biogen and Eisai have announced plans to pursue regulatory approval for ‘aducanumab’, which would be the first therapy to tackle clinical decline in early Alzheimer's disease.

The AIM-traded firm said that if successful, it presented an opportunity for it, given its ‘CANTAB’ assessments are specifically sensitive to the early cognitive decline during Alzheimer's disease.

It said that, despite initial concerns about the efficacy of aducanumab, new analysis of an expanded dataset revealed positive results at higher doses of the drug, with Biogen indicating that they would file for approval in the US early in 2020.

If approved, that would be the first drug to slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease, which Cambridge Cognition described as “a major therapeutic breakthrough”, as there had been no new treatments approved since 2003.

The “promising step forward” for Alzheimer's disease raised the urgent challenge of finding and assessing patients who were most likely to benefit from such drugs, with Cambridge Cognition claiming that its ‘CANTAB Mobile’ product could support clinicians in making that decision.

It explained that CANTAB Mobile delivers an automated memory assessment and depression scale to distinguish older patients who had concerns about their memory from those at increased risk of dementia.

The CE-marked, FDA-cleared and TGA-approved medical device was “poised to help clinicians all over the world” identify patients who were most likely to benefit from disease-modifying treatments, the board added.

“We were delighted to hear the news of Biogen's re-invigorated Alzheimer's programme, as it holds promise for the millions of people worldwide who are affected by the disease,” said Cambridge Cognition chief executive officer Matthew Stork.

“We are therefore preparing for the approval of disease modifying treatments so that patients and families can benefit from new therapies as soon as possible. CANTAB Mobile is a medical device that can help clinicians in identifying the right patients for these potential new treatments.”