Alzheimer’s disease occurs because harmless protein molecules, so-called monomers, clump into harmful toxic oligomers and damage nerve cells. The harmless monomers are constantly produced in all human beings without leading to disease. The toxic oligomers form rarely and kind of randomly, but if one waits long enough, they will form for sure. This is presumably the reason, why age is the highest risk factor for Alzheimer’s. 

Many research groups, as well as the pharmaceutical industry, are trying to reduce the production of the monomers in order to preventively decrease the probability of oligomer formation. Some few approaches attempt to label the oligomers with specific antibodies hoping that components of the immune system are able to deplete the oligomers. Our therapy strategy, however, is completely different. With our especially developed drug candidate we aim to target and directly eliminate already formed oligomers without the need to rely on the help of the immune system.

The positive results of all of our previous studies in several animal models have led us to take the next step towards a clinical study.