Aprinoia starts Ph 2 study of PET imaging tracer for Alzheimer's

22 November 2019 | News

Initiation of a Phase 2 Multicenter Study of 18F-APN-1607

image credit- medicalnewstoday.com

Taiwan based APRINOIA Therapeutics, Inc. has announced that it has initiated a Phase 2 multicenter, multinational study of ¹⁸F-APN-1607 in the US for its lead tau positron emission tomography (PET) tracer in Alzheimer's Disease (AD). The study (NCT number: NCT04141150) will compare tau deposition patterns in patients with mild cognitive impairment due to AD and dementia due to AD with patterns in healthy older adults.

Besides detecting tau aggregates in AD, ¹⁸F-APN-1607 is unique among the tau PET tracers currently in development because it can also visualize 4-repeat tau aggregates characteristic of rare tauopathies, including progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), corticobasal degeneration (CBD), and the great majority of frontotemporal dementia (FTD) due to tau mutations. Thus, ¹⁸F-APN-1607 may be able to offer broader utilities to detect tau distribution patterns in all tauopathies. This could be valuable for testing tau-focused treatments for AD and other tauopathies and possibly in the future even be clinically useful.

In addition to the Phase 2 study in AD, APRINOIA is establishing a clinical research network with leading imaging centers worldwide to conduct medical research with ¹⁸F-APN-1607. Such research includes clinical/imaging correlation studies, investigation of longitudinal tau pathology progression and spread in individual tauopathies, exploration of potential utilities in differential diagnosis, and studies to develop new AI-based tau PET image analytical tools.