Oxford, UK, 6th April 2022 Neuro-Bio researchers, in collaboration with the drug discovery company Evotec SE, UCLA, and King’s College London studied the ability of their patented drug, NBP14, to combat neurodegeneration in an established mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease. Intranasal treatment for 6 weeks resulted in a marked decrease of brain amyloid and, after 14 weeks, improved cognitive performance comparable to that of normal mice.
Baroness Professor Susan Greenfield, Founder and CEO of Neuro-Bio, says: “By using basic neuroscientific knowledge we have identified what we believe is a basic mechanism driving Alzheimer’s disease in the brain and have developed a molecule (NBP14) to combat it. Our recent efficacy study in mouse models further validates previous work describing an erstwhile unidentified mechanism in neurodegeneration and offers very exciting prospects for treating the disease in humans. This research should help position the drug intercepting this process, NBP14, for human clinical trials and hopefully create an entirely new era of Alzheimer’s therapeutics.”
Professor Paul L Herrling, former Global Head of Research of Novartis Pharma and Non-Executive Director at Neuro-Bio, says: “The results consistently indicate that NBP14 might interfere with the neurotoxic process that leads to neuronal degeneration in Alzheimer’s. This work has very exciting implications for treating Alzheimer’s because it is based on a strong scientific theory that hasn’t yet been applied to treatment of the disease.
The UK regulator, the Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, has accredited NBP14 with one of their first ‘Innovation Passports’ as part of a new licensing pathway that aims to reduce the time to market for innovative medicines.
NBP14 works by intercepting the process that Neuro-Bio believe could be a primary driver of neurodegeneration, a brain chemical named T14. In the last twenty years since it was first identified, evidence has become increasingly compelling that T14 plays an important role in early cell growth and normal development. However, this action can become toxic if triggered inappropriately in maturity and ultimately could lead to Alzheimer’s disease where brain levels of T14 have been shown to reflect degree of degeneration.
Inactivation of T14 could potentially serve as a treatment for Alzheimer’s by halting the early advance of cell damage occurring first in primarily vulnerable cells deep the brain. Initially identified by the neurologist Martin Rossor back in 1981, these primarily vulnerable cells form a kind of central hub in the brain, extending up from the top of the spinal cord. A key feature is that they are the first to display a pathology early in neurodegeneration.
Neuro-Bio believes that detection and measurement of T14 could be developed as a blood test or skin biopsy to identify the occurrence of the degenerative process during the window of ten to twenty years that typically occurs before symptoms start. If NBP14 proves effective in human trials, it could become a routine, home-administered nasal spray to halt neurodegeneration before any symptoms appear.
No harmful side effects at the active dose in the disease model were observed with NBP14 during the efficacy study. Neuro-Bio plan to take the drug to clinical Phase I trials as soon as possible.