Anders Sandberg
Alzinova AB
Sweden
Immunological and histochemical assessment of an Alzheimer´s vaccine
VINNOVA
54,407
01/06/2015
1
Alzinova is developing an Alzheimer´s disease vaccine, ALZ-101. This vaccine is a therapeutic vaccine, and is designed to arrest disease progression and prevent neurodegeneration in the brain. The vaccine is capable of specifically targeting the endogenous substance that causes disease – a feat made possible by a proprietary technology that stabilizes the antigen. In consequence, it is only this stable structure that is presented to the immune system, thus inducing B-cells to produce antibodies specific for it. The strength of this comapny is the unique capability of actually targeting the ´needles in the haystack´ and not just the ´straws´. This unique specificity is expected to translate into high clinical efficacy and an acceptable safety profile.The vaccine has been evaluated in mice with good results: Both naive mice and a transgenic model of Alzheimer´s disease support the concept and the proposed mechanism of action for this vaccine. Before commencing preclinical development, the vaccine is set to be evaluated immunologically in a separate species, as well as safety assessed by histochemical analysis on human tissue samples. These activities aim to verify the animal species as a model system for the full preclinical development project, as well as to establish that the immune response is specific for the target and not other tissue components.