another trial with 2100 patients with mild dementia caused by alzheimersin a news release on wednesday the company said that although some of the effects looked promising patients treated with solanezumab did not experience a statistically significant slowing in cognitive decline compared to patients treated with placebothe company said it would evaluate future plans for solanezumab but no longer planned to seek regulatory approval for use of the drug in treating symptomatic patients eli lilly stock initially dropped after the newsthis is very disappointing said dr reisa sperling a neurologist who is recruiting patients for a trial testing whether solanezumab can help people with amyloid buildup who are about 10 years away from having symptoms but i have to be honest that ive always thought we needed to treat much earlier because by the time people have mild dementia they already have a lot of irreversible damage she saidthe trial she is leading called antiamyloid treatment in asymptomatic alzheimers a4 which has funding from lilly and the federal government had hoped to reach its goal of about 1150 patients by the middle of next year said dr sperling who directs the center for alzheimer research and treatment at brigham and womens hospital and massachusetts general hospitali have several patients within my practice who were hoping to take this drug she said but she said it was at least encouraging that patients taking solanezumab in lillys trial did show improvement just not enough to be statistically significant and she plans to evaluate the data to see if changes should be made to the design of the a4 trialwhat does that mean for an earlier population dr sperling said do we need more people do we need a longer time i just want to get a clear resultthe other major solanezumab trial the dominantly inherited alzheimer network trials unit is also testing a roche drug gantenerumab and is funded by industry the federal government and the alzheimers association it involves people who have not yet shown symptoms but have a very high risk of an earlyonset version of the disease because they have a genetic mutation that causes a small subset of casesother trials are using antiamyloid drugs that work in different ways experts said solanezumab is a monoclonal antibody that removes amyloid by attaching itself to freefloating amyloid protein before the protein forms into plaques while several other antibody drugs also attack amyloid fibrils that are part of the plaquesanother class of antiamyloid drugs are called bace inhibitors which block an enzyme that makes a protein needed for amyloid productionyou cant really say that the solanezumab results predict that a drug with a different mechanism will fail dr schneider saiddr eric reiman executive director of the banner alzheimers institute is leading a prevention trial involving members of a large extended family in colombia who do not have symptoms but have a genetic mutation that causes early alzheimers they are taking genentechs crenezumabdr reiman said wednesdays results raised questions about whether lillys