Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[georgejjl]

Mitochondrial dynamics and transport in Alzheimer's disease

An additional approach recently developed by Anavex was shown beneficial in clinical phase 2a trial for AD where ANAVEX 2-73, a sigma 1 receptor agonist, improved cognitive performance and functional measure in patients. A chaperone protein, sigma 1 is activated in response to acute and chronic cellular stressors and modulates multiple mechanisms involved in neurodegeneration such as glutamate and calcium activity, reaction to oxidative stress, and mitochondrial function (Lahmy et al., 2013). Most recent data suggest that application of ANAVEX 2-73 may mediate beneficial effect also via activation of autophagy (Christ et al., 2019). Similarly, activation of mitophagy has been shown as an essential mechanism of neuroprotection in multiple animal models of AD granting further development of mitophagy activators for clinical application (Fang et al., 2019).

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1044743119300946