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Denovo Dusts Down Lundbeck's Failed Alzheimer's Drug

Three Phase III Misses For Idalopirdine

 
• By Kevin Grogan

The Danish group put the 5-HT6 antagonist on the shelf after three failed late-stage trials but Denovo believes that idalopirdine could still work for a subset of Alzheimer's patients.

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Taking another look at an Alzheimer's drug • Source: Archive

H. Lundbeck A/S is the latest pharma company to benefit from the upsurge in interest in hitherto unsuccessful Alzheimer's disease assets driven by the recent controversial US approval of Biogen, Inc.'s Aduhelm, with the Danish drugmaker licensing its discarded candidate idalopirdine to the Chinese-US biotech Denovo Biopharma LLC.

Idalopirdine, an oral 5HT6 antagonist, was a high-profile asset to which Lundbeck had licensed rights to Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd., but the wheels started to fall off in September 2016 when the Copenhagen-headquartered group reported that neither dose (30mg and 60mg) given in combination with donepezil met the primary or secondary endpoints in the Phase III STARSHINE clinical trial for Alzheimer's. The two doses evaluated in that late-stage trial were lower than the 90mg tested in a successful Phase II study to reduce side effects but this came at the expense of efficacy

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