Lundbeck ‘will continue to be supported by Pharmexa’

Pharmexa, a Danish biotech company, has announced it will continue to support Lundbeck in the development of a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

Lundbeck has in-licensed Pharmexa’s AutoVac technology for the development of a therapeutic vaccine for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, called PX106.

The announcement comes after Pharmexa cancelled the development of PX 104.1, a prospective breast cancer vaccine, after the first ten patients of a clinical study failed to demonstrate that their cancer was failing to progress after being treated with the vaccine, making it unlikely the trial would achieve its endpoints.

Jakob Schmidt, Pharmexa’s chief executive officer, said the company was disappointed with the results and added: “It looks like the patients simply progress before the vaccine has a chance to work.

“Although the antibody data are interesting and the number of patients treated is small, the conclusion is clear – there is no basis for continuing this trial in very ill metastatic breast cancer patients.”

“Either the patients must be healthier or the vaccine must work faster,” he concluded.

However, the failed trial should not alter Lundbeck’s development programme which uses the same technology.

AutoVac produced an immune response in metastatic breast cancer patients and Pharmexa says that in diseases like Alzheimer’s, the need to develop a fast immune response is less pressing than in severely ill patients with metastatic breast cancer.

Previous studies had shown some promise for the breast cancer vaccine, but Pharmexa said it was likely that the drug’s development would be cancelled unless it demonstrates advantages over currently-available HER-2 positive breast cancer treatments like Herceptin.

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