06:43 a.m. Oct 29, 1997 Eastern
By Andrea Orr
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California biotech company said Tuesday a treatment it has in development for Alzheimer's disease appeared to work as designed in preliminary tests in rats.
NeoTherapeutics Inc., based in Irvine, California, said it plans to start to test the effectiveness of the drug in people, and hopes to have inital results some time next year. Even if they are successful, however, additional tests would be needed and commercialization of the drug could be years away.
Still, the findings offered hope of a potential breakthrough in the treatment of Alzheimer's, for which there are currently no highly effective drugs.
NeoTherapeutics' drug is a compound known as AIT-082, which is designed to promote regeneration of damaged nerve cells by stimulating the body to produce growth factor.
``We found if we cut the spinal cords of rats and then gave them this drug in their drinking water, within seven days, we had turned on these growth factors in their spinal cords,'' Alvin Glasky, president of NeoTherapeutics said.
``We believe that our drug is working by generating new nerves. In other words, no matter how Alzheimer's disease occurs or how the nerve cells are killed, we are hopeful that our drug will cause new cells to be regenerated,'' said Glasky.
He is presenting his findings this week at the Society of Neuroscience annual meeting in New Orleans.
NeoTherapeutics' research builds on a breakthrough discovery last year by researchers at the University of California at San Diego, who demonstrated that nerve cells were capable of regenerating. The problem is that the growth factor needed to stimulate them to do so somehow gets turned off in mature adults.
``The capability is built into us but does not get expressed,'' said Glasky.
Since that discovery, researchers have been rushing to find a way to put it into practice. But efforts to inject the missing growth factor into the brain or the site of the injury have resulted in complications like infection or an undesired hyper-growth of nerve cells.
NeoTherapeutics' approach is somewhat different: it is an orally administered drug that stimulates the body to produce its own growth factor where it is needed. It has already been shown to be safe and well-tolerated in humans.
Existing treatments for Alzheimer's disease are of limited benefit since they do not address the underlying cause of dying nerve cells.
``If what we are seeing is correct, then in any situation where you have nerve degeneration you should be able to see effects,'' said Glasky.
He said the company plans to focus later clinical trials on other spinal cord injuries, and other neurological disorders such as stroke.
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