An Israeli company has received a patent for the first vaccine against Alzheimer`s disease.



Israel21c.com reports that CEO of Mindset Bio-Pharmaceuticals, Daniel Chain, announced his company’s progress at the Society of Neuroscience Meeting in New Orleans. He pointed out that preliminary studies carried out by the company indicate that Mindset’s vaccine may not cause the side effects that led Elan Corp. and Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories to stop an advanced stage clinical trial for their Alzheimer`s vaccine in March 2002.



Alzheimer's disease continues to be a major incurable medical condition. It is a degenerative neurological disorder that affects approximately 8 million people, with the number rising dramatically with an increasing elderly world population.



Despite the disappointment of the vaccine being found to cause adverse side effects, post-trial analysis of the data has shown that the vaccine was quite effective. "A recent paper in a leading journal, Neuron, describes the lack of cognitive decline after one year in 20 patients receiving the Elan vaccine," notes Cheryl Fitzer-Attas, Mindset`s Vice President for Research & Development, as reported by Israel21c.com. "This underscores the clinical promise for this type of treatment strategy."



"Mindset`s technology potentially addresses several major safety concerns for developing a vaccine to beta-amyloid, a protein which is naturally present in the brain and other tissues," said Chain. "These concerns include neurotoxicity of the native protein and difficulties in inducing an antibody response in elderly patients."



With regard to another major safety concern - the potential of Alzheimer's vaccines to induce an adverse autoimmune response - Mindset also offers good news. "In a related discovery, we have found out how to anticipate and also reduce the possibility for this undesirable reaction," said Fitzer-Attas.



The vaccine is still in the pre-clinical stage and is unlikely to enter clinical trials before 2006, according to Chain.



"The vaccine will be first tried in healthy elderly volunteers in Phase I trials before it can be tested in Alzheimer's patients (Phase II)," he said. "The Phase I trials would be expected to take about a year to complete before Phase II can start. We can safely assume at least seven or eight years before the vaccine could be approved by the FDA for general treatment. Given, the failure of a previous Alzheimer's vaccine trial that was sponsored by Wyeth and Elan Pharmaceuticals and terminated prematurely because of safety issues, the challenge will be to demonstrate safety. We believe Mindset's approach is potentially much safer but it will be necessary to carry out extensive safety testing in animals and then healthy humans before proceeding to patients."