AVXL - Annovis Anavex And Cassava Sciences: Trying To Box Oneself Out Of The Alzheimer's Box

2024-05-09 20:43:22 ET

Summary

• Recent results suggest that buntanetap, along with other treatments, does not significantly improve the condition of moderate Alzheimer's disease patients.
• Many current drug candidates for Alzheimer's disease work too far upstream in the disease process and do not directly scavenge oxidants, so they may only slow down mild Alzheimer's disease.
• Anavex's blarcamesine unlike Cassava Sciences' simufilam and Annovis's butanentap may nearly stabilize mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease for three years because it probably acts as a direct antioxidant.
• For this reason, investment in Anavex is probably still warranted.

Recent results for Annovis’s ( ANVS ) buntanetap appear to add to the list of treatments that do not help moderate Alzheimer’s disease patients. This list includes anti-amyloid antibody drugs such as Leqembi (Eisai and Biogen) and donanemab (Eli Lilly), and sigma-1 receptor agonists such as blarcamesine (Anavex) ( AVXL ) and probably simufilam (Cassava Sciences) ( SAVA ). These treatments can lead to at least some initial seemingly significant improvements in mild Alzheimer's disease but often not substantially better than the current standard of care. For buntanetap, the mild Alzheimer’s disease group showed a 3.3 point improvement in ADAS-Cog11 scores (Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Subscale) versus .94 point improvement in the placebo group whereas moderate Alzheimer’s disease patients improved by only .65 points versus a 1.14 decline in those on placebo at twelve weeks ( results ). One must remember that some patients in both the drug and placebo group are also taking either Aricept for mild Alzheimer’s disease or Namenda for moderate Alzheimer’s disease, so some of the improvement in the drug group are due to these other Alzheimer’s medications whereas most of the decline in the placebo group is due to people on no Alzheimer’s medications. That is why Alzheimer’s drug company executives and statisticians should not be puzzled by the better than expected placebo responses. Moreover, for mild Alzheimer’s disease, buntanetap produced no improvement in activities of daily living and in clinician’s evaluations of disease progression ( outcome ). For reasons discussed below, I don’t recommend investing in either Annovis or Cassava Sciences while I continue to see a glimmer of hope for Anavex....

For further details see: