Dr. Ludivine Witkowski, researcher and neurologist at the Dr. Georges-L.-Dumont University Hospital Center, is preparing to conduct a clinical trial on Simufilam, an experimental treatment for Alzheimer’s disease. A first in New Brunswick.
From next week, patients with the disease at an early or moderate stage will be administered Simufilam, an anti-Alzheimer’s drug developed by the American laboratory Cassava Sciences.
“We have twenty patients on the waiting list but we may be able to open up to more people,” says Dr. Ludivine Witkowski, who will supervise the clinical trial.
“The patients will be followed for 19 months during which we will do MRI tests, cognitive tests, blood tests, electrocardiograms. They will be monitored very closely to ensure the effectiveness of the drug and to verify that there is no tolerance problem.
According to preliminary results, this small molecule would improve cognitive functions by stabilizing a protein, filamin A. “We noticed that this drug improves certain cognitive functions, in particular working memory, memory for finding words. We also did tests on the cerebrospinal fluid, which surrounds the brain and the spinal cord, and we noticed that the markers of Alzheimer’s disease and the markers of inflammation improved in the treated patients. , says Dr. Witkowski.
“These are very good results compared to other drugs currently being tested. It gives patients a lot of hope.”
The drug has already been tested in animals, healthy humans, and then humans with Alzheimer’s disease, she adds.
“These studies were carried out on limited groups of patients for only six months, they were not done double-blind once morest placebo and according to high scientific standards. We now need to verify this data on large cohorts of patients by giving a group a fake medicine to make sure that it is the medicine that helps the patient and not the fact of being followed regularly.
The professional of the week will only take care of patients who have been referred by their doctor. Several criteria must be met: they must not smoke, and be neither too thin nor overweight.
Other cohorts of patients residing in the United States, Nova Scotia, Ontario and British Columbia will also participate in the multicenter clinical trial. In Canada, nearly 600,000 people are believed to be suffering from the neurodegenerative disease which destroys brain cells, causing deterioration of memory and thinking skills.
Dr. Ludivine Witkowski welcomes the fact that a clinical trial can be conducted for the first time in the province. “Until now, when I had really young patients whose disease was starting, I tried to send them to bigger centers so that they might get new drugs being tested,” she explains.
The one who studied in France received in 2017 a research grant from the New Brunswick Health Research Foundation and the New Brunswick Medical Training Center. She has since opened a clinic for atypical or early memory disorders and neurodegeneration research, located at the New Brunswick Center for Precision Medicine.
The clinician scientist is also involved in research to try to identify a blood marker for Alzheimer’s disease, which would make it possible to establish a diagnosis through a blood test rather than by means of a lumbar puncture.
“We have almost finished recruiting patients and we are in the process of analyzing the samples,” she says. We should have results in the next few weeks.”
