In another potential win for patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, Anavex Life Science’s precision medicine blarcasemine has met its primary endpoints in a late-stage trial.
Announced at the 2025 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC), results of the Phase IIb/III ATTENTION-AD (NCT04314934) extension study revealed that blarcasemine, dubbed internally as Anavex 2-73, improved patients’ cognitive function by 36.3%, as measured by the Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive 13-item (ADAS-COG13) scale.
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The oral autophagy reactivator also improved daily functioning by 27.6% according to the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale Sum of Boxes (CDR-SB) scale, highlighting the drug’s capacity to stave off symptoms of Alzheimer’s in the disease’s early stages.
Like other Alzheimer’s-targeting disease modifying therapies (DMTs) on the market, blarcasemine worked best in patients who began taking the drug early, with early initiation offering patients 19.5 months of ‘time saved’.
The ‘time saved’ concept describes the period in which a drug can stave off disease progression and allow patients to maintain both functionality and independence.
Alzheimer’s market competition heats up
In recent years, the once stagnant Alzheimer’s market has been ignited — primarily driven by the approvals of key anti-amyloid beta monoclonal antibodies (Aβ mAbs) such as Biogen & Eisai’s Leqembi (lecanemab) and Eli Lilly’s Kisunla (donanemab), which were given FDA greenlights in 2023 and 2024, respectively.
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By GlobalDataThis has driven the market’s value significantly, with a forecast from GlobalData, parent company of Clinical Trials Arena, estimating it will be worth $19.3bn in the 8 major markets (8MM includes the US, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, Japan and China) by 2033.
According to a report by Globaldata, these therapies are set to dominate the Alzheimer’s market, with Kisunla and Leqembi forecasted to rake in $2bn and $3.5bn, respectively, in the 8MMs.
However, neurology analyst at GlobalData, Phillipa Salter noted that anti-Aβ mAbs have been difficult to integrate into clinical practice due to “their association with significant side effects, including amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA).”
“They are also only modestly effective, so having alternative treatment options that don’t target amyloid will be welcomed in the AD space,” Salter commented.
Salter added: “Significant opportunity therefore exists for Anavex 2-73 with its convenient oral dosing and favourable safety profile.”
Instead of targeting and breaking down tau and beta amyloid (Aβ) plaques like Kisunla and Leqembi, Anavex 2-73 works to restore cellular autophagy — a natural process which becomes faulty in early Alzheimer’s disease pathology before plaques begin to form.
By targeting a mechanism involved in the very early stages of Alzheimer’s, blarcasemine differentiates itself from rival therapies at market.
