The Government Draws Attention to Swedish Alzheimer’s Research and Together with the Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation Visit AlzeCure Pharma
STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN / ACCESSWIRE / January 17, 2024 / AlzeCure Pharma (STO:ALZCUR)(FRA:AC6) AlzeCure Pharma AB (publ) (FN STO:ALZCUR), a pharmaceutical company that develops candidate drugs for CNS diseases, focusing on Alzheimer’s disease and pain, today announced that Anna Tenje, Minister for Older People and Social Security, together with representatives from the government and the Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation, on Wednesday 17 January visited AlzeCure Pharma. The purpose of the visit was to acquire knowledge and highlight the expanded research and development required as the number of people with dementia grows, as well as to draw attention to Swedish research in the area where AlzeCure Pharma’s Alzheimer’s project can play a significant role.
More than 55 million people globally are estimated to suffer from some form of dementia, and as life expectancy increases, the number of people suffering from dementia is expected to double by the year 2050. Although these are very serious diseases with a great impact on both the individual and their relatives, in Swedish dementia care, there is still a lack of both cures and well-functioning medicines that slow down the diseases, which means great challenges for health and social care. Today, research is heavily dependent on stable and comprehensive funding in the work to achieve the breakthroughs required to be able to deliver ground-breaking solutions to slow down and cure dementia. The Swedish government has therefore tasked the National Board of Health and Welfare to develop a basis for a developed national dementia strategy in order to meet future challenges.
As part of the work, Anna Tenje, Minister for Older People and Social Security, together with representatives from the government as well as the Alzheimer Foundation’s Secretary General Liselotte Jansson, have visited AlzeCure Pharma in Huddinge. During the visit, Alzecure Pharma’s CEO Martin Jönsson presented the company’s ongoing development in the field of Alzheimer’s, and discussions were held regarding treatment options for dementia today and in the future, as well as what future research funding could look like.
“We are honored and incredibly happy that the government chooses to pay attention to our important research in the field of dementia with an emphasis on Alzheimer’s disease. As the standard of living rises and healthcare improves, the average life expectancy increases, and thus also the risk of dementia-related diseases, which places very high demands on state-funded care. The need for more effective drugs that can slow down the course of the disease, and not least preventive treatments that could prevent the disease from breaking out, is very great. Anything that can facilitate our work to develop new medicines is important and I look forward to seeing the results of the work that the government and the National Board of Health and Welfare are now conducting,” said Martin Jönsson, CEO of AlzeCure Pharma.
Alzheimer’s disease is a neurodegenerative disease, which is a collective term for various conditions in which the brain’s nerve cells gradually deteriorate and eventually die. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, around 60-70 percent of all dementia cases stem from this disease and in Sweden around 20,000 people are diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease every year, while in the US this figure is close to 500,000. AlzeCure Pharma currently works with two research platforms with a focus on dementia diseases; NeuroRestore®, which develops a new generation of symptom-relieving drugs for the treatment of diseases with cognitive disorders to improve learning and memory capacity, and Alzstatin®, which develops innovative preventive and disease-modifying oral drugs for Alzheimer’s disease.
The Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation is driving the support of research into dementia diseases and is the fundraising organization in Sweden that contributes the most to Alzheimer’s research. The foundation’s vision is to be able to prevent and fight dementia through financial support for research. The Alzheimer’s Foundation is also the founder of the research foundation AlzeCure, which has led to the formation of AlzeCure Pharma AB.
“We saw that large resources are required to be able to solve the puzzle of Alzheimer’s disease and that the basic academic research needed to be supplemented with more clinical and patient-oriented research. We therefore took the initiative to form the research foundation AlzeCure, which now operates as the pharmaceutical company AlzeCure Pharma AB. It is very gratifying for us to see the fine development that the company has and we are very hopeful for the future and that our initiative has been a successful investment. We need to see more innovative research in the Alzheimer’s field,” said Liselotte Jansson, Secretary General of the Swedish Alzheimer Foundation.
For more information, please contact
Martin Jönsson, CEO
Tel: +46 707 86 94 43
martin.jonsson@alzecurepharma.com
About AlzeCure Pharma AB (publ)
AlzeCure® is a Swedish pharmaceutical company that develops new innovative drug therapies for the treatment of severe diseases and conditions that affect the central nervous system, such as Alzheimer’s disease and pain – indications for which currently available treatment is very limited. The company is listed on Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market and is developing several parallel drug candidates based on three research platforms: NeuroRestore®, Alzstatin® and Painless.
NeuroRestore consists of two symptomatic drug candidates where the unique mechanism of action allows for multiple indications, including Alzheimer’s disease, as well as cognitive disorders associated with traumatic brain injury, sleep apnea and Parkinson’s disease, as well as for depression treatment. The Alzstatin platform focuses on developing disease-modifying and preventive drug candidates for early treatment of Alzheimer’s disease and comprises two drug candidates. Painless is the company’s research platform in the field of pain and contains two projects: ACD440, which is a drug candidate in the clinical development phase for the treatment of neuropathic pain, and TrkA-NAM, which targets severe pain in conditions such as osteoarthritis. AlzeCure aims to pursue its own projects through preclinical research and development through an early clinical phase, and is continually working on business development to find suitable outlicensing solutions, alternatively partnership, with other pharmaceutical companies.
FNCA Sweden AB is the company’s Certified Adviser. For more information, please visit www.alzecurepharma.se.
About Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting approximately 55 million people worldwide. Alzheimer’s disease is a lethal disorder that also has a large impact on both relatives and the society. Today, preventive and disease modifying treatments are missing. The main risk factors to develop Alzheimer’s are age and genetic causes. Even though the disease can start as early as between 40 and 65 years of age, it is most common after 65 years. Significant investments in Alzheimer research are being made because of the significant unmet medical need and the large cost of this disease for healthcare and society. The total global costs for dementia related diseases is estimated to about $1.3 billion globally in 2019. Given the lack of both effective symptomatic treatments and disease modifying treatments, the need for new effective therapies is acute.The few approved drugs on the market today have only a limited symptomatic effect and can produce dose limiting side effects. A disease modifying treatment for Alzheimer’s disease is estimated to reach more than $15 billion in annual sales. In Sweden, approximately 100,000 people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease with a healthcare cost of about SEK 63 billion yearly, which is more than for cancer and cardiovascular diseases combined.
About Alzstatin
AlzeCure’s disease-modifying research platform, Alzstatin, consisting of disease-modifying and preventive drug candidates, focuses on reducing the production of toxic amyloid beta (Aβ), such as Aβ42, in the brain. Aβ42 plays a key pathological role in Alzheimer’s and begins to accumulate in the brain years before clear symptoms develop. The drug candidates in the Alzstatin platform modulate the function of the enzyme gamma secretase. Gamma secretase acts like a pair of scissors and cuts Aβ42 out from a longer protein known as APP. The sticky Aβ42 clumps together giving rise to the amyloid plaque so typical of Alzheimer’s disease. The candidates in the Alzstatin platform affect enzyme function so that it instead cuts out shorter forms of the Aβ peptide, Aβ37 and Aβ38, which in addition to them not being sticky and not forming aggregates, also have a restrictive effects on Aβ42 aggregates already formed. This means the drug candidates in the Alzstatin platform have two separate but synergistic effects that together contribute to a stronger anti-amyloidogenic – and thus more potent – disease-modifying effect. This specific mechanism of action differentiates it from biological therapies, e.g. antibodies. Moreover, small molecules such as Alzstatin, have several other advantages, including easy and non-invasive administration as tablets or capsules. Small molecules will also generally pass more readily through the blood-brain barrier to reach its target, the brain.
About NeuroRestore
NeuroRestore is a platform of symptom-relieving drug candidates for disease states in which cognitive ability is impaired, e.g. Alzheimer’s Disease, sleep apnea, traumatic brain injury and Parkinson’s disease. NeuroRestore stimulates several important signaling pathways in the brain, which among other things leads to improved cognition. Preclinical studies with NeuroRestore have shown that AlzeCure’s drug candidates enhance communication between the nerve cells and improve cognitive ability.
The NeuroRestore substances are so called Trk-PAMs which stimulate specific signaling pathways in the central nervous system known as neurotrophins, the most well-known being NGF (Nerve Growth Factor) and BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor). The levels of NGF and BDNF are disturbed in several disease states and the signaling is reduced. The impaired function impairs communication between the synapses, i.e. the contact surfaces of the nerve endings, as well as reducing the possibility of survival for the nerve cells, which gives rise to the cognitive impairments. Neurotrophins play a crucial role for the function of nerve cells, and a disturbed function of BDNF has a strong genetic link to impaired cognitive ability in several different diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury and sleep disorders. There is also a link between BDNF signaling and depression, something that has been further strengthened in recent years. In addition to cognitive-enhancing effects, new preclinical data also show that NeuroRestore substances have a positive effect on mitochondrial function and cell survival, which could indicate potential disease-modifying effects.
The leading drug candidate in the platform, ACD856, has recently completed clinical phase I studies and demonstrated positive effects there that support continued development of the program.
About the Swedish Alzheimer’s Foundation
The number of people affected by dementia in the world is over 55 million and that number will have tripled by the year 2050.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common diagnosis and is a degenerative brain disease that is 100 percent fatal. Research needs more resources to solve the dementia puzzle, find a cure and stop the disease.
The Alzheimer’s Foundation is a fundraising organization with a 90 account and is one of Sweden’s most important financiers for research into Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia diagnoses. The Alzheimer’s Foundation focuses only on research grants for this research field.
The Alzheimer’s Foundation’s operations are based entirely on voluntary donations from private individuals and companies, no government grants are received.
Every year, the foundation distributes funds to leading researchers at the country’s universities, and it is the scientific quality of the projects that determines who receives grants. The Alzheimer’s Foundation has a highly qualified scientific council that evaluates and ranks the research projects with the greatest potential for decision by the Alzheimer’s Foundation’s board.
The Alzheimer’s Foundation also conducts extensive information work around these diseases and organizes many activities in the field aimed at sufferers and relatives.
For more information: www.alzheimerfonden.se, info@alzheimerfonden.se.
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SOURCE: AlzeCure Pharma
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