Otsuka terminates Alzheimer’s agitation drug after failed Phase 3

Ot­su­ka end­ed de­vel­op­ment of AVP-786 af­ter the ex­per­i­men­tal Alzheimer’s dis­ease treat­ment failed a late-stage study ear­li­er this year.

The com­pa­ny made the de­ci­sion to ter­mi­nate the pro­gram “af­ter a de­tailed analy­sis of re­sults from the com­plet­ed tri­al,” ac­cord­ing to a press re­lease on Wednes­day.

Re­searchers had been study­ing the drug in ag­i­ta­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with de­men­tia due to Alzheimer’s. But in Feb­ru­ary, Ot­su­ka an­nounced that AVP-786 did not top place­bo af­ter 12 weeks on an as­sess­ment of ag­i­tat­ed be­hav­iors called the Co­hen-Mans­field Ag­i­ta­tion In­ven­to­ry to­tal score.

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