Alnylam Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced positive interim results from the ongoing single ascending dose part of the Phase 1 study of ALN-APP, an investigational RNAi therapeutic targeting amyloid precursor protein (APP) in development for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA).
Twenty patients have been enrolled in three single-dose cohorts in Part A of the ongoing Phase 1 study in patients with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. In this study to date, single doses of ALN-APP, which are administered by intrathecal injection, have been well tolerated. All adverse events were mild or moderate in severity, with available cerebrospinal fluid data for white blood cells and protein appearing similar to placebo.
Early data for neurofilament light chain from a subset of cohorts (2 of 3 studied) looked comparable to placebo. Patients treated with ALN-APP experienced dose-dependent, rapid and sustained reduction in cerebrospinal fluid of both soluble APPα (sAPPα) and APPβ (sAPPβ), biomarkers of target engagement, with maximum reduction of 84% and 90%, respectively. Median decreases of both biomarkers of greater than 70% was sustained for at least three months at the highest dose tested. Detailed interim results from this study are planned to be reported at an upcoming scientific conference.
“ALN-APP, via its upstream targeting mechanism, has the potential to address the underlying cause of two devastating CNS diseases, Alzheimer’s disease and CAA, which affect many millions of people and their families around the world. Thus, we are excited by these interim clinical data for ALN-APP, which demonstrate rapid, substantial and sustained target protein reduction and encouraging safety and tolerability to date,” said Pushkal Garg, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Alnylam.
These early results establish the first human translation of Alnylam’s proprietary C16-siRNA conjugate platform for central nervous system (CNS) delivery and are the first clinical demonstration of gene silencing in the human brain using an RNAi therapeutic.
“Establishing human proof of concept with ALN-APP is a major step in our efforts to expand our organic product engine to extrahepatic tissues like the CNS, a critical goal in our Alnylam P5x25 strategy,” said Yvonne Greenstreet, MBChB, Chief Executive Officer of Alnylam. “This further reinforces our belief that RNAi therapeutics have the potential to become a new class of medicines for silencing genes implicated in causing CNS diseases.”
SOURCE: Businesswire