Transition Therapeutics (TTHI) – Alzheimer’s treatment drug (amyloid plaque blocker (allegedly)) based on schyllo-inositol (a coconut palm extract). Clinical trials stopped on 2 higher does, continuing on lower. Given it’s a sugar analogue, could just be doing something very simple like making the BBB more porous or altering neuronal metabolism in some weird way, thereby giving spurious results in animal models. Could actually be causing further brain damage in humans and the 9 deaths associated with the administration of the compound slightly support this possibility. The links between blood sugars (and diabetes) and the development of Alzheimer’s are known, but not at all well understood. It is possible that sugars of this type actually increase the risk of the disease. They are seen to naturally increase in the brains of alcohol-related encephalopathy patients although I think it’s not clear if this is part of neuronal damage/symptoms or a symptom in terms of a positive/protective metabolic response to the alcohol abuse. Either way, very very doubtful this 250mg trial of s-inositol will prove successful. Of course it would have been good to have predicted this when TTHI was at $8 (I wasn’t paying attention!) – now at $3.50 it seems a bit late. Much of the costs here have been borne by Elan (ELN) here. But a look at a 4-year chart of Neurocrine (NBIX), for example, will show what happens when clinical trials of a drug for a one-trick brain-drug pony, fail (clinical trial extension of insomnia drug indiplon announced May, 2006 – price $60 to $20 that week. Now at $2.60).
Granted, Transition do have a type-I diabetes drug (TT-223, a peptide-like, gastrin analogue compound) in phase-II with Eli-Lilly (LLY). Novo-Nordisk (NVO) had the first shout on partnership here and pulled out. In my eyes, NVO are the diabetes drug experts and the fact they pulled out, even after phase 1 had been paid for therefore hugely decreasing the risk, is a bad sign for this drug. Funding has also been pulled by the JDRF in the past too. Also, it’s not clear it’s really showing any useful efficacy beyond several other current treatments. Plus they only have 80 patients in the trial which is never going to be enough to satisfy the FDA of anything. I’m generally not a fan of peptide-like drugs either and having them develop long term affects like increasing pancreatic beta-cell growth (see INGAP and DiaPep227 failures) seems even more fanciful. Anyway – PII results for this drug coming next year too.
I would be a short of TTHI here and expect a 90% fall over the next 12-24 months for a short-side ten-bagger.
Disclosure: I am not myself short of TTHI at the time of this post.
