News flash: Isis and Roche hope to start Huntington’s gene-silencing trial in first half of 2015

The long-anticipated clinical trial of a drug that could potentially stop Huntington’s disease at its genetic roots and perhaps someday even prevent the disorder in presymptomatic HD gene carriers like me could start by the middle of 2015.

If successful, the trial could result in a drug in five or six years.

Officials at Carlsbad, CA-based Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in an interview with me on August 22, said that the Phase I trial for their drug, ISIS-HTT_Rx, likely will start by the second quarter of 2015, as long as the company receives regulatory approvals and fulfills other standard requirements for trials.

ISIS-HTT_Rx is an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO), a synthetic strand of DNA that silences, or turns off, the messenger RNA that makes proteins as coded by the DNA. If ISIS-HTT_Rx works as intended, it would reduce the production of the huntingtin protein in brain cells, reduce damage to the brain, and reduce or even eliminate HD symptoms.

ISIS-HTT_Rx is the company’s internal name for the drug, which will later receive a generic scientific name and, if it reaches the market, a commercial name. HTT is scientific shorthand for the huntingtin gene, messenger RNA, and protein. Rx is shorthand for a medical prescription.

Isis is also conducting standard toxicological studies of the drug in non-human primates to assure that it will not cause harm to humans. A Phase I trial tests for safety and tolerability. Researchers can make observations about the drug’s efficacy but must then conduct Phase II and Phase III trials, which involve more people, to demonstrate whether the drug really works.

Isis is planning the trial with the Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, vastly experienced in clinical trials and staffed with specialists in neurological disorders. Last year the two entered a partnership that included a $30 million infusion of funds into the Isis preparations for the clinical trial.

The trial will involve 36 early-stage Huntington’s patients at four to six sites in Canada and Europe. If Phase II occurs, the companies would extend the study to the U.S.

Only recently did Isis, a world leader in ASO science and technology, settle on ISIS-HTT_Rx.

You can watch my brief report from Isis headquarters in the video below. Soon I will provide a detailed report on the ISIS-HTT_Rx clinical trial project.

News flash: Isis and Roche hope to start Huntington's disease gene-silencing trial in first half of 2015 from Gene Veritas on Vimeo.

Ramping up

I have tracked the Isis project since 2008 and, with the rest of the HD community, anxiously awaited the start of the ASO trial.

I became excited when I recently saw ISIS-HTT_Rx listed on the Isis website. It reminded me of the need to get an update on the project. This last visit to the company was my fifth.

At my first visit in 2008, I had learned that Isis hoped to start a Phase I trial in 2010. However, each time I obtained an update on the project, I learned that the researchers had postponed the start of the trial to account for new scientific discoveries, advances in HD research, improved ASO technology developed by Isis itself, and the desire to engineer the safest and most effective drug possible.

The postponements always disappointed me, but I also understood that scientific research and drug discovery are slow and painstaking processes.

However, during the August 22 meeting, it became abundantly clear that Isis and Roche are ramping up for the clinical trial. They are making necessary final arrangements such as the selection of sites, to be announced in early 2015. Significantly, with the selection of ISIS-HTT_Rx – the culmination of nearly a decade-long search for an efficacious drug in which the company tested some 2,000 ASOs – the engineering is complete.

Optimism and realism

Later that day, I pondered the likelihood of the Isis-Roche trial and how much of a change that meant for me, and for those in my situation.

After so many years of research and millions of dollars in investments, a clinical trial was becoming a reality. 

Reviewing the Isis visit with my wife Regina during a late-afternoon walk, I mentioned how a future, improved version of ISIS-HTT_Rx might prevent HD symptoms.

At 54, I am now well past my mother’s age of HD onset. Each day without HD is a gift. I felt simultaneously hopeful and concerned, optimistic and realistic, as Regina and I calculated when ISIS-HTT_Rx might reach the market: Phase I would likely end in 2017, and Phases II and III would likely take the project beyond 2020. A second generation of drugs for asymptomatic gene carriers would come even later.

I recalled that a clinical trial is an experiment with an unpredictable outcome.

More than ever I need to focus on maintaining my health in order to postpone the inevitable HD onset as long as possible.

In the meantime, I will cheer on the Isis-Roche team as it brings the hope of an HD-stopping drug.

See below links to previous reports on Isis.

"A key new ally in the search for Huntington's disease treatments"

"Quickening the pace towards a Huntington's disease gene-silencing trial: pharma Giant Roche, Isis enter partnership"

"Designing the best drug possible to defeat Huntington's disease"

"Building a 'laser-guided' missile to defeat Huntington's disease"

"Observing the cure in progress"

Bidding farewell to CoQ10: a long-studied supplement proves ineffective in the fight against Huntington’s disease

One of the first and most-studied potential treatments for alleviating the symptoms of  Huntington’s disease has proved ineffective, leading researchers to halt a clinical trial of the substance.

Along with many others in the HD community, I have taken the readily available supplement coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10). As I wrote in a February article about the debate over unproven supplements, the lack of a treatment to slow HD’s devastation of the brain led me to take several of these substances in the hopes of staving off onset (click here to read more).

As reported August 13 by the HD science portal HDBuzz.net, the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) and the Huntington’s Study Group (HSG) stopped the CoQ10 clinical trial this week because of lack of significant results.

“It seems clear now that coenzyme Q10 does not work for HD,” the HDBuzz article stated. “Looking back, the body of evidence used to decide to test CoQ10 in human patients was fairly limited. In fact, recent efforts to repeat the observation that CoQ10 makes HD mice better have failed.”

According to HDBuzz, the trial known as 2Care, was the “largest ever therapeutic trial for Huntington’s disease.” It had enrolled 609 participants with early HD symptoms from 48 sites throughout North America and Australia. Half received a placebo, while the other half took 2,400 mg of CoQ per day – four times the amount that I have taken.

My supplements, including coenzyme Q10 at far left (photo by Gene Veritas)

A natural substance, CoQ10 is found in all of our cells and helps to turn food into chemical energy. Starting in the mid-1990s, scientists hypothesized that CoQ10 might help alleviate the serious energy deficits found in the brains of HD patients.

In another recent clinical trial, CoQ10 was also shown to have no benefit in stopping early Parkinson’s disease symptoms.

After consulting with several HD specialists, I have decided to stop taking CoQ10. Given the demonstrated lack of efficacy against HD, I see no reason to continue.

Also, although inexpensive over-the-counter varieties of CoQ10 exist, I have taken a medical-grade form that has cost me $1,000 per year. (Health plans do not cover supplements.) I can use that money to relieve strain on the family budget and/or spend it on services such as psychotherapy that help me cope with my situation as an HD gene carrier.

For now, I will continue to take other supplements as detailed in my February article: trehalose, creatine, omega-3 oil, and blueberry extract. However, I also plan to carefully rethink this strategy in consultation with my neurologist and HD specialists. (For a 2012 overview of key supplements and HD by Dr. LaVonne Goodman, please click here.)

A process of elimination

“While the results of this study are disappointing to all of us – particularly the people with HD who faithfully took the drug …  every day for as long as five years, and subjected themselves to blood draws and neurologic exams and questionnaires and surveys as part of their participation in the study – they are nonetheless very important,” Martha Nance, M.D., the director of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) Center of Excellence at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis wrote in an e-mail response to my request for comment. “Knowing that coenzyme Q10 DOESN’T work will spare the HD families of today and tomorrow the expense of the supplement, and the false hope that it created.”

Dr. Martha Nance: trial result ends "false hope" about CoQ10.

“Nobody said that finding a cure for HD would be easy, but I think that HD patients and families should be enormously proud of their efforts in this study – a commitment that can only help us with the future trials and challenges ahead,” Jody Corey-Bloom, M.D., Ph.D., the director of the HDSA Center of Excellence at the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an e-mail.

The process of elimination in scientific and clinical research is a slow, meticulous, but necessary part of the quest for treatments. Only one in ten clinical trials results in an effective drug. Understanding what doesn’t work expands scientists’ knowledge of the disease.

“We can now divert the resources that were going to be used for the 2CARE study to other studies with a better chance of working,” the HDBuzz article pointed out. “In fact, it’s likely that the next year or two will see the launch of several trials targeting specific mechanisms underlying HD, rather than ‘generally beneficial’ compounds like CoQ10.”

Added Dr. Nance: “We are actively pursuing many other avenues in HD research, and hope that many people will share the wonderful attitude of my patient (I will call her Susan), who said: ‘So, Dr. Nance, I'm sorry that this one is over, but now can I enroll in another HD research study?!’”

Closing out a complex relationship

For me, the end of the 2Care trial closes out nearly two decades of a complex relationship with CoQ10.

I first started taking an over-the-counter variety in early 1996, just weeks after learning of my mother’s diagnosis for HD. With a 50-50 chance of inheriting the gene for a devastating, incurable brain disorder that was inexorably destroying my mother’s personality and ability to think and walk, I grasped for whatever might provide the slimmest of hope.

In the mid-2000s, I started taking a higher grade of CoQ10 along with other above-mentioned supplements in a study under the Huntington’s Disease Drug Works program, which at the time emphasized a “treatment now” approach for a community desperate for solutions. After the study ended, I continued to take the substances and paid for them out of pocket.

CoQ became part of my daily ritual. I broke up the 600 mg chalky, yellow, sweetened CoQ10 tablet into four parts, which I took methodically at breakfast, lunch, and before and after dinner.

Although I knew there was no evidence about CoQ10’s efficacy, I believe it may have had a placebo effect. At 54, I have passed my mother’s age of onset. Now whatever placebo effect might have existed will disappear. In my particular use of CoQ10 and the other supplements, however, an actual placebo effect is scientifically unproven. In addition, scientists are getting closer to understanding the factors (such as a modifier gene) that trigger HD onset.

Throughout my journey with CoQ10, I always viewed it as peripheral at best. I believed that the best hopes lay with the potential remedies such as gene silencing aimed at the root causes of the disease.

Knowing the complexity of HD, I knew that a dietary supplement such as CoQ10 provided no more than a sliver of hope.

As I bid farewell to CoQ10 and the idea that it could delay onset, I’m once again forced to rethink how to survive in the gray zone between my genetic test result and the inevitable onset of an incurable disease. With science as a guide, I'm adjusting what is essentially an attempt at self-treatment.

Making the threat of Huntington’s disease ‘small stuff’

To reduce anxiety about the threat of Huntington’s disease, I start each day with a deep breathing exercise and meditation.

I started developing this practice in late 1997, two years after learning of my mother’s diagnosis for HD and the devastating fact that I had a 50-50 chance of inheriting the mutated gene. After many months struggling with worry and denial, I had hit rock bottom emotionally. (I eventually tested positive for the HD mutation.)

Browsing at titles in a bookstore – bookstores mattered a lot more before the e-book explosion – I came across Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… and it’s all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life, a bestseller by the late Richard Carlson, Ph.D.

Over the next few months, I studied the book’s 100 brief chapters, each prescribing how to achieve calm in our harried world. Some might consider self-help books shallow, but I found this one to have a core of wisdom.

Chapter 1, “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff,” lays out Dr. Carlson’s basic philosophy, a combination of Judeo-Christian fraternal love with a Buddhist de-emphasis of the desire for material success.

“Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren’t really that big a deal,” Dr. Carlson wrote. “We focus on little problems and blow them way out of proportion…. So many people spend so much of their life energy ‘sweating the small stuff’ that they completely lose touch with the magic and beauty of life. When you commit to working toward this goal you will find that you will have far more energy to be kinder and gentler.”

Getting calm with deep inhalation

Chapter 63, “Count to Ten,” was pivotal for me.

“When you feel yourself getting angry, take a long, deep inhalation, and as you do so, say the number one to yourself,” Dr. Carlson suggested. “Then, relax your entire body as you breathe out. Repeat the same process with the number two, all the way through at least ten (if you’re really angry, continue to twenty-five).”

The deep breathing “clears your mind with a mini version of a meditation exercise,” he explained. It increases the oxygen in your lungs, reduces anger, and provides perspective, making “big stuff” look like “little stuff.”

With time I settled on 20 deep breaths for every morning, followed by a few minutes of quiet relaxation. I usually sit in a lotus position on a carpet or on the edge of a chair or couch with my back arched forward to get the air as deeply into my lungs as possible.

When family or work obligations occasionally make it impossible to meditate at home, I do my breathing while driving or in airports.

When I don’t meditate, my day almost always becomes more stressful, sometimes even sad.

The breathing provides a powerfully calming effect. I feel that I’m doing something good for my brain by increasing the oxygen. By reducing my overall stress level, I hope, I can help delay the onset of HD symptoms.

In the video below, you can watch the demonstration of the technique I gave at the start of my keynote speech at the 2011 HD Therapeutics Conference, sponsored by the CHDI Foundation, Inc., in Palm Springs, CA. Other members of the HD community as well as caregivers and counselors engage in or recommend similar exercises, and a vast bibliography exists on yoga and meditation techniques. The principles here can apply for everybody in any aspect of life.

Coping with Risk for Huntington's Disease by Meditating from Gene Veritas on Vimeo.

Increased anxiety, new insights

The past couple years I have included in my meditation a reading from Living Faith: Daily Catholic Devotions. Resonating with many of Dr. Carlson’s points, Living Faith helps me tap my spiritual dimension, longstanding since my childhood in the Catholic church, and contemplate the mysteries of suffering and the Creator’s love.

Over the past couple years, now well beyond the age at which my mother’s symptoms started, I’ve become more anxious about HD as well as things in general. So, early this year, I decided to add a daily reading from Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff to my morning meditation.

A couple weeks ago, I finished.

Rereading Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff brought back warm memories of how I had overcome difficult moments, including depression, in those early years after my mother’s diagnosis – including my own positive test for the HD mutation in 1999.

It also revealed how I’ve usually dealt successfully with the ongoing challenges of living at risk. Rereading the book reinforced the lessons I had learned. It also provided me with new insights.

Some of my favorites are: Chapter 6, “Remind Yourself that When You Die, Your ‘In Basket’ Won’t Be Empty”; Chapter 16, “Ask Yourself the Question, ‘Will This Matter a Year from Now?”; and Chapter 66, “Think of What You Have Instead of What You Want.”

Problems as teachers

Two chapters in particular have helped me reflect on HD: Chapter 17, “Surrender to the Fact that Life Isn’t Fair,” and Chapter 75, “Think of Your Problems as Potential Teachers.”

“One of the nice things about surrendering to the fact the life isn’t fair is that it keeps us from feeling sorry for ourselves by encouraging us to do the very best we can with what we have,” Dr. Carlson wrote. “We know it’s not ‘life’s job’ to make everything perfect, it’s our own challenge.”

Regarding problems, he wrote: “Rather than push away the problem and resist it, try to embrace it. Mentally, hold the problem near to your heart. Ask yourself what valuable lesson(s) this problem might be able to teach you.”

Humility, acceptance, and hope for treatments

This is solid advice. However, isn’t a deadly genetic brain disorder like HD truly “big stuff” that just can’t be meditated away?

I’ve thought a lot about this question as I reread Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff and corresponded with HD-affected friends. They are struggling with the loss of their mental and physical abilities; they can no longer work or drive and need help from others for the simple tasks of daily living.

Recently I also attended the wake for an old friend who died in his early 60s of pancreatic cancer, a mainly incurable condition. I didn’t know he was ill, so his death came as a shock.

I imagine my own HD symptoms, watching myself quietly fade away, losing the ability to write, teach, and engage with my family as we guide our daughter through high school and start thinking of retirement.

That is big stuff!

However, I try to make it as small as possible. When I’m not resorting to my old friend denial – which becomes harder as I approach the inevitable onset – I reflect on two of the key lessons taught by Dr. Carlson and the authors of Living Faith: the need for humility and acceptance.

I will die. As I witnessed with my mother, HD is a horrible way to go.

However, until onset I will adhere to Dr. Carlson’s Chapter 100: “Live This Day as if It Were Your Last. It Might Be!” 

As both Dr. Carlson and Living Faith's authors would agree, living life in that manner includes making the world a better place and engaging with family, friends, and many others. I may die of HD, but the collective work of advocates like me, together with the scientific community and friends and supporters, may help make HD "little stuff" in the future by furnishing effective treatments.