Could this be the beginning of a fight back? TauRx Therapeutics’ Alzheimer’s drug candidate, LMTX, prevents the formation of Tau tangles that are implicated in the disease.
TauRx Therapeutics develops new treatments and diagnostics for neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. The company saw positive results during a second Phase III trial investigating its anti-tau aggregation candidate, LTMX: a dose of just 4mg twice-daily significantly reduced the loss of neurons in the brain. On the back of the recent failures by Eli Lilly, Merck and Axovant, this is a welcome piece of good news for the field. TauRx will be keen to build on this, with the Alzheimer’s Disease treatment market set to almost triple from $4.9B (€4B) in 2013 to an estimated $13.3B (€11B) by 2023.
LMTX reduces the levels of aggregated or misfolded tau proteins, a major characteristic of Alzheimer’s. The drug shares its active ingredient, methylthioninium, and mode of action with Rember, TauRx’s first generation tau aggregation inhibitor. Phase II trials of Rember demonstrated that targeting protein aggregation could slow disease progression. TauRx comes up against strong competition in the field, including AC Immune, which has covered all bases, developing both anti-Tau and anti-amyloid-beta therapies, and Araclon Biotech is entering Phase II with its vaccine.
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