Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[Joseph_K]

Sabbagh believes in the "amyloid hypothesis," but I think he'd be very happy to see an Alzheimer's drug without all the safety issues and limitations presented by lecanemab. See this 4-minute video interview with him if that sounds interesting: https://www.neurologylive.com/view/working-towards-lowering-aria-rates-reducing-amyloid-plaques-marwan-sabbagh

Sabbagh also is tied in with Eisai and Biogen. At CTAD 2022, he presented the safety information for lecanemab on their behalf.* He also is a co-author on their major journal article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Lecanemab in Early Alzheimer’s Disease.**

I like it that he's so broadly connected and in the industry. And he's on TV and mainstream news enough that he could qualify as Anavex's head of PR!

He also made this comment about blarcamesine in a conversation*** recapping CTAD of 2022:

There was also a report on blarcamesine, which is a sigma-1 and muscarinic receptor agonist. We know that we’ve seen muscarinic receptor agonists tried before, which would be theoretically symptomatic benefit with a procholinergic [drug]. But as far as I can tell, the previous attempts at this haven’t been successful. But targeting sigma-1 makes sense from a biological standpoint because sigma-1 has a lot of endogenous, endocellular type of activity. I’m excited to see where that’s going to go.

* https://www.biospace.com/article/ctad-2022-anti-amyloid-and-beyond-/ and https://www.barrowneuro.org/about/news-and-articles/in-the-news/barrow-neurologist-discusses-alzheimers-drug-trial-results/
** https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2212948?query=featured_home
*** https://www.neurologylive.com/view/data-from-other-emerging-alzheimer-s-disease-treatment-options-from-ctad-2022