Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

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Cellular Homeostasis, Or Other Mechanisms, Too?

Are the other products in the Anavex pipeline focused on cellular homeostasis or is it a different molecular reaction that occurs with these drugs,....

Good question.

Clearly, Anavex 2-73, when targeted at Alzheimer’s disease, restores “homeostasis,” normalized cell function, in neurons. It’s a unique, proprietary molecule that re-connects endoplasmic reticula that have become physically separated from adjacent mitochondria, restoring the ability of this organelle complex to make, among others, waste-clearing proteins, enzymes.

Inasmuch as Parkinson’s disease, like Alzheimer’s, is a mitochondrial dysfunction disease, restoration of neuron function by Anavex 2-73 will use the same mechanism of action.

But examination of the Anavex pipeline drugs list (http://www.anavex.com/pipeline/), shows other diseases and conditions that other drugs are aimed at.

For example, Anavex 1079 is aimed at melanoma, a skin cancer, and acute and neuropathic pain. Presently, I don’t know if an Anavex sigma-1 receptor agonist can, by either ER/mitochondrion re-connection , or some other mechanism somehow terminate the unfettered cell reproduction and metastasis of this cancer.

Perhaps mitochondrial malfunction in these cells prevents the synthesis of proteins or enzymes that control and suppress cell-division. Perhaps Anavex 1079 can fix these abnormalities, restoring normal cell function, normal homeostatic processes keeping cell reproduction in control.

But I have no actual understanding of this mechanism with this drug with melanoma cells.

Nor can I, off hand, attempt to explain just how this Anavex drug might turn off or control acute (happening once, and self-limiting) and neuropathic (“disease in the nerve”) pain.

Same with all the other indicated new pipeline drugs. Don’t know just how they mioght work, at the molecular and cellular level.

But I’m confident of this: they do. Anavex Life Sciences Corp serves no purpose, internal or external, by marking up the names of still-in-the-lab new drugs aimed at posted diseases or conditions, unless they have strongly supporting lab, rodent or other animal, data.

Although I can’t answer it in any definitive way, your question is really important.

In the narrowest way, if Anavex 2-73 is the only Anavex drug that gets approved, for only Rett syndrome, Parkinon’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases, that this sigma-1 receptor agonist will treat only those three diseases (soon in definitive clinical trials), financial outcomes for Anavex Life Sciences Corp and its shareholders will be restricted to them (nonetheless gigantic).

What are the prospects that each of the yet-untested Anavex pipeline drugs go on to prove safe clinical efficacies against their listed disease targets—or even others not yet revealed or discovered? The Anavex story would expand to new volumes.

Again, I’ve seen no information telling any specifics about new or additional drug mechanisms of action to be effectively used against other than the few (but big) diseases we’ve mentioned. Simply because Anavex lists those other molecules targeting other diseases, there must be some firm basis for that. Anavex has to have lab rat data and at least conceptual understandings that their molecules will work against those diseases.

That, alone, will be gigantic. But I find no reason to discount the high probability that other diseases and conditions, perhaps many more, will find Anavex solutions.

Here, I drift off into yet murky imaginations; that, perhaps, the Anavex revolution will be bigger than any of us can clearly foresee, that new Anavex pharmacology might provide prophylaxis or treatment for just a host of diseases, broadly a diversity of cancers, cardiovascular diseases and conditions, psychiatric conditions, etc. What if a new Anavex molecule treats or prevents diabetes and/or obesity? Imagine the implications, of those alone.

There is already profound evidence that Anavex 2-73 provided rather complete, adverse-event-free sleep to the Australian Alzheimer’s patients who were otherwise affected by insomnia (a common but essentially un-treatable severe Alzheimer’s symptom).

Might this eventually become a safe over the counter treatment of insomnia? That market would be massive. What other drugs yet in Anavex labs might eventually turn out to be new, safe, effective over-the-counter drugs?

Let’s watch how all of this plays out. I think it’s going to be a lot more than just the present Big 3: Rett, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. The exact mechanisms of action of the other Anavex pipeline drugs have not been clearly elucidated or revealed. For us, that’s actually immaterial. Safety and efficacy are all that really matter.