Gantenerumab, an antibody that binds to beta-amyloid, clears
plaques in a matter of months, report scientists at F. Hoffmann-
La Roche Ltd., Basel, Switzerland, in a study published online
in Archives of Neurology. The Phase I study of 16 Alzheimer’s
patients tested gantenerumab at two doses against a placebo over
six months of treatment. Senior author Luca Santarelli and
colleagues used positron emission tomography (PET) scans to
visualize and compare levels of amyloid plaques in the brain
before and after intravenous antibody treatments, and found the
decreases. The current study did not evaluate cognition. Many
researchers suspect the build-up of such plaques may be a cause
of this memory robbing disease. There are, in fact, almost a
dozen anti-beta-amyloid antibodies in clinical testing,
including solanezumab, developed by Eli Lilly and Company,
Indianapolis, Indiana, which, along with bapineuzumab, is
furthest along in clinical development. An earlier small study
of the Elan Pharmaceuticals/Wyeth antibody