In the fall issue of Vital Signs, Marlies Sproll, Ph.D., the CSO
of MorphoSys, discusses a new antibody in the pipeline for the
treatment of Alzheimer’s. Developed by Roche with the support of
MorphoSys’ HuCAL technology, this new antibody gantenerumab is
currently in Phase 1 clinical trials: “Alzheimer’s disease (AD)
affects 5.3 million people and is the seventh leading cause of
death and the most common type of dementia in the United States.
Alzheimer’s is an incurable, progressive disease, and the
treatments currently available only serve to alleviate its
symptoms. Thus, AD represents the largest unmet need in
neurology. Early diagnosis and therapeutic strategies that could
delay the onset and progression of this debilitating disease
would be considered a success…Pathological hallmarks of AD are
the deposits of extracellular amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaques,
intraneuronal tangles—composed of hyperphosphorylated tau—,and
cerebral neuronal loss. Therefore, strategies to develop drug
candidates with potential diseas