Biogen touts glimpses of efficacy in early study of tau-lowering drug

An ex­per­i­men­tal ge­net­ic med­i­cine de­signed to short-cir­cuit the pro­duc­tion of the Alzheimer’s-linked pro­tein tau showed signs of slow­ing cog­ni­tive de­cline in a small study from Bio­gen.

The com­pa­ny has pre­vi­ous­ly demon­strat­ed that the drug, an an­ti­sense oligonu­cleotide dubbed BI­IB080, re­duced lev­els of tau in the brain. The new re­sults, pre­sent­ed Wednes­day morn­ing at the Clin­i­cal Tri­als on Alzheimer’s Dis­ease con­fer­ence in Boston, sug­gest that the 16 peo­ple who got a high dose of the drug in the 46-per­son study pro­gressed more slow­ly than oth­er­wise ex­pect­ed af­ter two years.

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