Doctoral thesis in Alzheimer’s awarded best thesis 2019 at Sahlgrenska Academy
AlzeCure Pharma AB (publ) (FN STO: ALZCUR) and Sahlgrenska Academy at Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden, have had a multi-year research collaboration in the CNS field, and their joint doctoral student Hlin Kvartsberg’s solid work has now been awarded best thesis 2019 at Sahlgrenska Academy.
The thesis, with the title The postsynaptic protein Neurogranin – A new item in the Alzheimer’s disease biomarker toolbox, was defended at at pubic dissertation on April 12, 2019 at Sahlgrenska Academy.
The thesis, which was made possible by generous support from Swedish Brain Power, focused on a new possible biomarker in Alzheimer's disease, the synapse protein neurogranin. This protein, which can be measured in spinal fluid samples from patients, is a new potential marker for the pathological changes observed in nerve cells early in the disease. The studies, which have shown changes in levels of this marker specifically in Alzheimer's patients, have attracted great interest in the field and generated several publications in scientific journals.
“Few are given the opportunity to be able to follow a project from the laboratory bench and small pilot studies, right up to leading the work on making it accessible to patients, which it should be in the autumn”, said Hlin Kvartsberg, researcher at Sahlgrenska University Hospital.
“Hlin's solid work is extremely interesting, and these types of biomarkers are important for the entire field, not least for the research and drug development we do at AlzeCure - partly to identify relevant patient populations, but also to potentially evaluate the effect of drug treatments”, said Johan Sandin, co-supervisor and CSO at AlzeCure Pharma.
“Diagnosis and biomarkers in the Alzheimer's area are an area of active research, and Hlin's work shows that the impact of the disease on nerve cell connections can now be measured with a spinal fluid test. This will be important both for diagnostics and for evaluating new drug candidates”, said Henrik Zetterberg, co-supervisor, professor and consultant at the Department of Neuroscience and Physiology at Sahlgrenska.
Link to the interview: https://akademiliv.se/2020/05/65858/
Link to the thesis via GU: https://gupea.ub.gu.se/handle/2077/58493
For more information, please contact
Martin Jönsson, CEO
Tel: +46 707 86 94 43
martin.jonsson@alzecurepharma.com
The information was submitted for publication, through the agency of the contact person set out above, at 11.45 CET on May 14, 2020.
About AlzeCure® Pharma
AlzeCure Pharma AB is a Swedish pharmaceutical company that develops new innovative drug therapies for the treatment of severe disorders 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 parallell drug candidates based on the three research platforms, NeuroRestore®, Alzstatin® and Painless.
NeuroRestore comprises three symptom-relieving drug candidates where the unique target mechanism opens up for multiple indications – Alzheimer’s disease, but also cognitive dysfunction in traumatic brain injury, sleep apnea and Parkinson’s disease.
Alzstatin is comprised of two disease modifying and preventive drug candidates for treatment of early Alzheimer’s disease.
Painless, which is the company’s research platform in the field of pain, contains two projects: VR1/ACD440 which is a clinical candidate for the treatment of neuropathic pain, and TrkA-NAM that is targeting pain disorders such as osteoarthritis.
AlzeCure aims to pursue its own projects through preclinical research and development to an early clinical phase.
FNCA Sweden AB, +46(0)8-528 00 399, info@fnca.se, is the company’s certified adviser. For further information, please visit our website at www.alzecurepharma.se.
About Alzheimer’s disease
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of dementia, affecting approximately 45 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 1,000 billion USD globally in 2018. 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 10 billion USD in annual sales. In Sweden, approximately 100,000 people suffer from Alzheimer’s disease with a healthcare cost of about 63 billion SEK yearly, which is more than for cancer and cardiovascular diseases combined.
