Cassava reported results on 100 Alzheimer patients in an open label (e.g. no controls) trial of Simufilam for 1 year — https://finance.yahoo.com/news/cassava-sciences-reports-second-quarter-131500494.html. The average results were unimpressive (to the uninitiated) with only a minimal average overall improvement of an ADAS-Cog11 score of 1.5 points. This is probably why the stock (SAVA) dropped a point yesterday after the news. Since everything turns on ADAS-Cog11 here is a link to a complete description — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5929311/. The test takes about 45 minutes placing it out of reach of a busy practicing clinical neurologist.
Why is even the 1.5 point improvement impressive to the initiated (me)? Over 32 years in clinical neurology, I’d estimate that I saw at least 1 demented patient each week. Now probably only 300 or so of the 1,664 were followed for a year. Guess what? None of them remained stable for a year, and all got worse. Absolutely none of them ever got better after a year. So at least some stabilization of the disease is possible for a year. The statistics say that Alzheimer patients lose 5 points a year on ADAS-Cog.
But that’s pretty small beer. Who wants to keep a demented patient around but stable. Here is the remarkable part of the Cassava results at a year.
63% of the 100 Patients Showed an Improvement in ADAS-Cog11 Scores, and This Group of Patients Improved an Average of 5.6 Points (S.D. ± 3.8). The statistics say that Alzheimer patients lose 5 points a year on ADAS-Cog.
This is unprecedented and is a strong argument for quick approval of Simufilam (or at least compassionate use).
The cynic will say that I’m just looking at the happy part of the Bell curve. There must have been people who declined to average the improvement in the 63% down to a measly 1.5 points on the ADAS-Cog.
This is where clinical experience comes in. No drug helps everyone with a given disease. “Only 20% of cancer patients respond long term to a type of immune checkpoint blockade (of PD-1)” Science vol. 363p. 1377 ’19. Nonetheless immune checkpoint blockade of several types was approved by the FDA, simply because there was nothing better available.
So if nearly 2/3 of Alzheimer patients will improve at one year on Simufilam, why not let the FDA offer it to them now under compassionate use.
Chemiotics II 