Aberdeen spin-out TauRx has reached its enrolment target for a phase III clinical trial.
TauRx, an Aberdeen University spin-out, has reached its enrolment target of 833 subjects for its latest clinical trial. The phase III trial is the first of two, and is meant to definitively confirm the safety and efficacy of LMTX for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.
The trial is double-blind and placebo-controlled, and its recruited subjects live in North America, Europe, Russia, Australia and Southeast Asia. All subjects suffer from a mild to moderate form of Alzheimer’s. The treatment period is 15 months.
TauRx’s second phase III clinical trial has an enrolment target of 700 subjects diagnosed with mild Alzheimer’s. The company has managed to recruit 80%, and is hoping to complete enrolment by the end of October 2014.
LMTX is a so-called tau aggregation inhibitor. Tau proteins can be found in abundance in neurons of the central nervous system. With Alzheimer’s disease these tau proteins become defective and are no longer able to stabilise the large molecules essential in maintaining cell structure. There is currently no treatment available on the market to either halt or slow down this process once a patient is affected.
Claude Wischik, chair in mental health at Aberdeen and chairman at TauRx, said: “Achieving our target enrolment in the first of our two phase III clinical trials for Alzheimer’s is an important milestone for our company. It moves us another step closer to our objective of bringing the first tau-targeted and genuinely disease-modifying treatment for Alzheimer’s disease to patients. Awareness of our clinical trial has been high in the light of a string of failures of trials targeting ß-amyloid. Interest from physicians, carers, patients and international Alzheimer’s groups demonstrates the need for innovative treatments that halt or slow the progression of Alzheimer’s so that, in the near future, people with Alzheimer’s may be able to live without fear of an inevitable decline into dementia.”