Empowered Patient Podcast Oral Drug Therapy for Slowing Progression of Alzheimer’s and Lewy Body Dementia with Lisa Ricciardi and Dr. Tony Caggiano Cognition Therapeutics
Lisa Ricciardi, CEO, and Dr. Tony Caggiano, Chief Medical Officer at Cognition Therapeutics, are developing effective treatments for neurological disorders, particularly Alzheimer's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB). While DLB is related to Parkinson's, sharing symptoms include hallucinations, sleep disorders, and cognitive dysfunction, there are no good diagnostics to identify DLB and effective treatments. Cognition Therapeutics' lead drug candidate, an oral treatment, has shown promise in protecting neurons from the toxic effects of the pathological proteins involved in Alzheimer's and DLB.
Lisa explains, "This company started in 2007, so we've had a long number of years to burnish our mission. One of the things we say is we're the beginning of the end of neurologic disorders and the start of hope for an improved future for patients. So Alzheimer's disease, in particular, has been long studied with little success, and in the last few years, we've seen some successes with monoclonal antibodies. There are a number of other approaches in clinical trials, but we have recently generated very positive data in two different trials with an oral once-a-day drug."
Tony elaborates, "Lewy body dementia or dementia with Lewy bodies is a disease very much related to Parkinson's disease that's believed to be, in part, caused by pathological levels of a certain protein called alpha synuclein and particularly small oligomers of misfolded alpha synuclein."
"And in Alzheimer's disease, this is largely a cognitive memory disorder as it presents. So, those two diseases are very different. Now, the idea of treating them with a single drug is somewhat unique to what we have here at Cognition Therapeutics. So our company started around the idea of developing therapies for Alzheimer's disease, and our lead molecule CT1812 or zervimesine was developed out of a screening assay where we were looking for molecules that could protect neurons or brain cells from the toxicities of this pathological amyloid protein. So, we identified CT1812 and have been developing it."
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