2024-04-16 21:00:00
Swiss pharmaceutical company Roche.
Global pharmaceutical company Roche published clinical research results showing that ‘Prasinezumab’, which is being developed as a treatment for Parkinson’s disease, showed efficacy in slowing the progression of the disease in Parkinson’s disease patients.
Parkinson’s disease was first discovered and named by British doctor James Parkinson in 1817. It is a neurodegenerative disease in which slow movement, tremors at rest, and muscle stiffness gradually worsen as the dopamine neurons in the brain decrease. There is still no fundamental cure.
On the 16th, a phase 2 clinical study report on ‘pracinezumab’ written by the Roche research team was published in the international academic journal Nature. According to the report, in this phase 2 clinical trial, the research team divided 316 Parkinson’s disease patients into a high-dose (4,500 mg) group, a low-dose (1,500 mg) group, and a placebo group and administered the drug once every four weeks for one year.
As a result, it was found that the worsening of motor symptoms such as tremors, stiffness, and slow movements slowed in the patient groups injected with low-dose and high-dose drugs compared to the placebo group. Patients who received placebo scored 6.82 points in the evaluation of Parkinson’s disease motor symptoms one year after treatment, while patients who received pracinezumab scored 4.15 points. The larger the number, the worse the motor symptoms are.
Additionally, the researchers explained that in this study, the symptom relief effect was greater in patients with rapid progression of Parkinson’s disease.
Parkinson’s disease is a degenerative disease caused by the loss of nerve cells that produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. Since dopamine is not secreted well, commands from the brain are not transmitted well to the body. Muscles become rigid, spasms occur, and the body becomes stiff, making daily life difficult. Current treatments mostly slow the progression of symptoms by administering drugs or passing electric current to brain areas lacking dopamine, but even this is ineffective when the disease progresses. Levodopa, a drug used to treat Parkinson’s disease, can alleviate symptoms by stimulating dopamine secretion, but after 5 years, resistance develops and the drug becomes ineffective.
Roche focused on the ‘alpha (α) synuclein’ protein, which is considered the cause of Parkinson’s disease. Academic circles believe that this protein accumulates in nerve cells that produce dopamine, blocking the transmission of nerve signals. Pracinezumab targets alpha-synuclein as an antibody. If this treatment is successfully developed, it will become the world’s first Parkinson’s disease antibody treatment.
Roche’s Dr. Gennaro Pagano, who led the study, said, “These clinical results indicate that there is a high potential therapeutic effect of pracinezumab in the group of patients with advanced Parkinson’s disease,” adding, “The faster and more advanced the disease is in patients, the more brain damage there is. “Because the amount of accumulated protein is greater, drugs that remove this protein are more effective,” he explained.
However, in this study, the research team was unable to evaluate and reveal whether the treatment eliminates alpha-synuclein, which is the key to developing new drugs to treat Parkinson’s disease. Currently, Roche is conducting a phase 2b clinical trial to evaluate the treatment effectiveness and safety of pracinezumab in patients with early-stage Parkinson’s disease.
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