The Dale

Algorae Pharmaceuticals (ASX: 1AI) today announced positive pre-clinical results demonstrating the neuroprotective effect of AI-116, it’s combination drug candidate Donepezil Hydrochloride and cannabidiol. Acetylcholinesterase inhibitors (AChE), such as Donepezil, are FDA registered first line treatments for Alzheimers disease.

In in-vitro assays, neuroblastoma cells were concurrently treated with varying doses of CBD and Donepezil in the presence of Amyloid β. Cell viability was measured using the MTT assay. Improvement in cell viability was determined as a percentage increase in cell survival over cells treated with Amyloid-β.alone.

In the data reported below, the control arm of the in-vitro study demonstrated high levels of toxicity when neuronal cells are exposed to Amyloid-β. the improvements in cell viability observed with the AChE inhibitor and CBD alone was substantially improved with the optimal fixed dose combination of AI-116 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Average percentage increase in cell survival relative to amyloid  treated control cells. Zero is the benchmark for AB effected cells with no treatments, whereby cell viability was 65.5%. Cell viability increased by 2.1% to 67.6% for Donepezil, by 11.6% to 77.1% for CBD and by 20.1% to 85.6% for AI-116

Results indicate that combination CBD and Donepezil may synergize to increase the neuroprotective effect in neuronal cells exposed to toxic amyloid-β, with the observed combined effect of the two drugs on cell viability is 33% greater than what would be expected if we added together the effects of each drug used alone.

Principle investigator Professor Garrie Arumugam had the following to say:

“These preliminary in vitro results are very promising, showing a clear pattern of neuronal cell protection and synergistic method of action. I am eager to further investigate the implications of these findings and how they could pave the way for new insights and potentially advancements in drug development.”

The market awaits additional RNAsequence analysis which will assess the therapeutic mechanism associated with the use of AI-116.

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