Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[apostrophe]

Amyloid is your friend. Destroy it at your own peril.

Ok, maybe that's a bit over the top as a headline. :)

Well, perhaps a bit of sensationalism is warranted to compete with all the current media hooplah over Anavex's competitor Biogen. Biogen's amyloid shattering therapy is being hailed as some kind of amazing breakthrough. I seriously doubt that it's anything of the sort. In fact, the currently fashionable "war on amyloid", displacing cholinesterase inhibitors as the industry darling, is ill conceived. It's all based on early total acceptance of the "amyloid hypothesis" which is also looking ill advised. imo

After one of the previous bubbles burst, there were all these brand new office buildings, unoccupied. Nobody to rent office space. Yet construction continued on more. Why? Because contracts had been signed. They had to be finished. I think something like that sometimes happens in (big) bio-tech. Amyloid plaques are discovered. The conclusion is jumped to that it is the cause of the disease. Now a space race to the moon is launched. Billions are committed to get rid of the nasty amyloid, who will be first. They have to finish. Meanwhile guys like the research below indicating a contrary result apparently didn't get any more funding.

Found this research article from a few years that confirms my scepticism about getting rid of all the amyloid.

"Guardian Amyloid?

http://www.alzforum.org/news/research-news/guardian-amyloid-av-hexamers-help-multiple-sclerosis-mouse-model

Amyloid is an electrical insulator, just like the myelin sheath around axons. The sheath is composed of flat Schwann cells which wrap themselves around the axon like wrapping paper around a wire. They are mostly lipid (a kind of fat) which isn't known for being sturdy, but their main function is to insulate. This allows charge to build up underneath which speeds the action pulses on their way to the next neuron must faster than without. Damaged insulation is a characteristic of Multiple Sclerosis.

Although the new plaque therapy is better than reformulated painter remover as I initially feared, I'm not sure if it really is that much better. I also previously joked about yet another bizarre new therapy being announced that involved training brain-eating amoebae to eat amyloid. Seems I wasn't so far off. Microglial cells in the brain, which normally perform cleanup duty at a leasuirely pace, have different modes and can tranform themselves as required including an amoeboid form. Go figure. :)

The new therapy involves tagging amyloid which stimulates the microglia into becoming a hoard of amyloid devouring berserkers. OK, so we have some amyloid stuck on an axon. Is it possible that some of the flavor has imprinted on the myelin, what if our newly energetic little packmen start chomping on that? My other concern relates to the idea that AD may be caused by errant immune response. In which case we would want to calm things down, not add to the mayhem. (aka Anavex 2-73)

Oh well. Time will tell who is more right...