The result isn’t a big surprise – Roche terminated two phase 3 trials of crenezumab in people with prodromal to mild sporadic Alzheimer’s in early 2019 after interim analyses found it would be futile to continue – but is another blow to the amyloid hypothesis.
It also probably marks the end of the road for crenezumab, which Roche’s Genentech subsidiary licensed from AC Immune in 2006 in a deal initially valued at $300 million.
The phase 2 API-ADAD study, a pioneering investigation which has been running for more than a decade, looked at crenezumab’s ability to slow or prevent Alzheimer’s symptoms in a population of cognitively unimpaired people who carry a specific genetic mutation which causes early-onset Alzheimer’s.
