An interim exploratory biomarker analysis of a Phase 2 clinical trial to assess the impact of CT1812 in Alzheimer’s disease

Abstract

ABSTRACTCT1812 is a novel, brain penetrant small molecule modulator of the sigma-2 receptor (S2R) that is currently in clinical development for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Preclinical and early clinical data show that, through S2R, CT1812 selectively prevents and displaces binding of amyloid beta (Aβ) oligomers from neuronal synapses and improves cognitive function in animal models of AD. SHINE is an ongoing Phase 2 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial (COG0201) in patients with mild to moderate AD, designed to assess the safety and efficacy of 6 months of CT1812 treatment. To elucidate the mechanism of action in AD patients and pharmacodynamic biomarkers of CT1812, the present study reports exploratory cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarker data from an interim analysis of the first set of patients in SHINE (part A). Untargeted mass spectrometry-based discovery proteomics can detect more than 2,000 proteins in patient CSF and has documented utility in accelerating the identification of novel AD biomarkers reflective of diverse pathophysiologies beyond amyloid and tau and enabling identification of pharmacodynamic biomarkers in longitudinal interventional trials. We leveraged this technique to analyze CSF samples taken at baseline and after 6 months of CT1812 treatment. Proteome-wide protein levels were detected using tandem mass tag-mass spectrometry (TMT-MS), change from baseline was calculated for each participant, and differential abundance analysis by treatment group was performed. This analysis revealed a set of proteins significantly impacted by CT1812, including pathway engagement biomarkers (i.e., biomarkers tied to S2R biology) and disease modification biomarkers (i.e., biomarkers with altered levels in AD vs. healthy control CSF but normalized by CT1812, and biomarkers correlated with favorable trends in ADAS-Cog11 scores). Brain network mapping, Gene Ontology, and pathway analyses revealed an impact of CT1812 on synapses, lipoprotein and amyloid beta biology, and neuroinflammation. Collectively, the findings highlight the utility of this method in pharmacodynamic biomarker identification and providing mechanistic insights for CT1812, which may facilitate the clinical development of CT1812 and enable appropriate pre-specification of biomarkers in upcoming clinical trials of CT1812.HIGHLIGHTSEffects of CT1812 on AD patients were investigated in a randomized Phase 2 clinical trialPharmacodynamic biomarkers of CT1812 were identified through unbiased analysis of proteomics quantitation data acquired using TMT Mass Spectrometry (TMT-MS)CT1812 normalized a set of biomarkers altered in ADFindings provide proof of mechanism that CT1812 impacts synapse, inflammation, amyloid-related processes