Dimebon Failed in Clinical Trial - Hopes for Alzheimer’s Drug Are Torn Apart

• Date: March 08, 2010
• Source: admin

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For the patients of Alzheimer’s, Dimebon was perhaps the brightest ray of hope but that hope also got dashed when the drug failed in the last stage of the first clinical trial. Its failure not only demoralized its hopeful patients but also blown Medivation and Pfizer – the two companies which were dealing with the medicine.

Dimebon, whose “clinical data is by far and away superior to anything that’s ever been shown before” has surprised researchers as it failed to deliver any satisfactory result after six months in treating the cognitive decline or behavioral problems associated with Alzheimer’s when compared with a placebo.

Dimebon, the old Russian hay fever pill is also known as latrepirdine and was sold as an antihistamine in Russia starting around 1983, though production and sales of the drug had stopped some years ago. It was Sergey Bachurin, a scientist at the Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds in Russia, who discovered the antihistamine medicine as a prospective Alzheimer’s curer. He first applied this drug on animals and then on a small group of patients, when succeeded, he filed for the patents of the medicine. With the success of the medicine, Dr. Hung set up Medivation in US.

Now with its failure in trial, not only the hops of millions of Alzheimer’s patients dipped but also shares of both its owning companies, Medivation and Pfizer dipped to a great extent. However, Medivation and Pfizer have started afresh and conducting additional trials in which Dimebon is being combined with other Alzheimer’s drugs.

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/