Results from using Biogen’s experimental nerve repair drug in a disease of the eye were “mildly encouraging,” experts say, keeping alive the hope that the medicine might work in multiple sclerosis.
The results will be presented next week at the 67th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in Washington, DC. Forbes received a study abstract.
The drug, known as Anti-LINGO-1, is promising because it is the first medicine to try to repair damaged nerves in diseases like MS. Existing MS blockbusters like Biogen’s Tecfidera and Tysabri and
This study chose to study Anti-LINGO-1 in another disease caused by nerve damage, optic neuritis. The study measured the time it took for a nerve impulse to move from the retina to the brain in 41 patients who received the medicine and another 41 who got a placebo. In patients who completed at least five of their six doses, there was a 34% improvement in latency time at week 24. Further improvement was seen eight weeks later, at the end of the study.
“This is the first time that there is anything that has really shown a result where there is repair of an existing nerve,” says Aaron Miller, an MS expert at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. This is evidence of such repair, although Miller notes that it is "relatively soft."
But the drug did not show results on clinical endpoints – patients didn’t feel better – or on imaging tests of the nerve. Miller points out that the 24-week result is only barely statistically significant.
“It’s a mildly encouraging result and it clearly needs further study,” Miller says. He gets consulting and research money from Biogen for his work on other drugs.
Jeffrey Cohen, an MS expert at the Cleveland Clinic, struck a similarly reserved tone. “Intentionally, the study was designed to assess short-term repair from an acute lesion in a previously normal anatomic pathway, not in established MS,” he wrote in an email.
“The hope is that these results will be generalizable to chronic lesions, lesions in a previously damaged pathway, as in MS, but that will need to be tested and remains to be seen.”
In a press release, Biogen chief medical officer Al Sandrock said: "RENEW is the first study to show repair of the human central nervous system (CNS) through remyelination, and the results support our ongoing development of this molecule. We believe the anti- LINGO-1 data point toward a potential new approach to treating demyelinating diseases, and we look forward to the ongoing Phase 2 SYNERGY study results to further clarify the potential of this investigational therapy in MS.”
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