Roche confirms second, more focused, trial of Huntington’s disease drug will start early next year

 

As anticipated, the pharmaceutical firm Roche will retest its Huntington’s disease gene silencing drug, tominersen, by enrolling a more limited group of volunteers for a new clinical trial, which should start in early 2023.

 

Roche announced the new trial, GENERATION HD2, on September 18 at a meeting of the European Huntington’s Disease Network (EHDN) in Bologna, Italy. Roche also issued a letter to the HD community.

 

Roche halted the GENERATION HD1 trial of tominersen in March 2021 because of lack of efficacy against HD symptoms.

 

However, after months analyzing the GENERATION HD1 data, Roche reported in January that tominersen might benefit younger patients with less advanced symptoms. The new 16-month study, GENERATION HD2, will verify efficacy in that group.

 

GENERATION HD1 enrolled clinical trial volunteers ranging in age from 25-65 and included people with more advanced disease.

 

GENERATION HD2 will limit participation to people aged 25-50 who have “prodromal (very early subtle signs of HD) or early manifest HD,” the Roche letter stated.

 

“I am very excited about this new trial,” Jody Corey-Bloom, M.D., Ph.D., wrote me in a September 19 e-mail.

 

Dr. Corey-Bloom directs the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) Center of Excellence  at the University of California San Diego, a site for GENERATION HD1 and again for GENERATION HD2.

 

“A lot of thought has gone into the new trial,” Dr Corey-Bloom observed. “I think this is a very well-planned trial!”

 

Roche world headquarters in Basel, Switzerland (photo by Norman Oder)

 

Key adjustments in dosing

 

According to the Roche statement, GENERATION HD2 aims to sign up approximately 360 participants in approximately fifteen countries (Argentina, Austria, Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Additional locations might be added.

 

The study will have three cohorts. One third will receive placebo, one third 60 mg of tominersen, and one third 100 mg. To ensure the objectivity of the trial, neither the participant nor study team will know what the participant receives.

 

In contrast with GENERATION HD1, the new trial also will administer lower doses of tominersen. In GENERATION HD1, all volunteers receiving the drug took 120 mg. In GENERATION HD2, participants taking the drug will get either 60 mg or 100 mg.

 

Another key difference involves the frequency of dosing. GENERATION HD1 administered the drug every two or four months, whereas the new study will dose at only four months.

 

These adjustments are a major goal of the study: to determine whether lower or less frequent dosing can be beneficial. Such lower dosing or less frequent dosing potentially avoids some of the problems seen in GENERATION HD1. In that trial, the higher dose did not benefit volunteers (click here and here to read more).

 

As in the first trial, in GENERATION HD2 tominersen will be administered via lumbar puncture (spinal tap).

 

Renewed but cautious hope for preventing HD

 

The Roche letter reported that GENERATION HD1 and all other related tominersen studies have closed.

 

“These studies comprised the first-ever Phase III [efficacy] clinical program to test the huntingtin-lowering hypothesis,” the letter noted, referring to tominersen’s mechanism of lowering the amount the huntingtin protein involved in HD. “Additionally, it was because of the HD community’s commitment to research that the trials recruited faster than anticipated, and thus generated data faster than anticipated.”

 

That commitment, the letter observed, “inspires all researchers to continue pursuing potential options for people impacted by the disease.”

 

Roche will announce additional information about GENERATION HD2 in the coming months.

 

After the devastating news about tominersen 18 months ago, its potential seemed dead. Now, though enthusiasm about tominersen has perhaps diminished, a new, albeit less ambitious, path perhaps has emerged for the drug.

 

"Overall, the announcement of the new GENERATION HD2 trial at the EHDN meeting was well received by the audience in Bologna, which was a mix of clinicians, scientists, and families," HDSA CEO Louise Vetter, who attended the meeting, wrote me in an e-mail. "The fact that this trial is clearly a dose-finding study was notable, and it seem representative of the more conservative mood in the HD clinical science right now."

 

“While the results of GENERATION HD1 were certainly disappointing for everyone, they don’t mean that huntingtin-lowering isn’t a viable therapeutic approach,” Sarah Hernandez, Ph.D., the Director of Research Programs for the HD-focused Hereditary Disease Foundation, wrote me in an e-mail. “Targeting huntingtin directly targets the cause of HD and remains one of the strongest therapeutic hypotheses.”

 

GENERATION HD1’s results “also don’t mean that HTT lowering won’t eventually work for a broad population of people with HD,” Dr. Hernandez added. “They just mean that tominersen seems to require a more narrow patient group for efficacy. The new GENERATION HD2 trial seeks to define exactly what that patient group is, which could be very significant in moving the field forward.”

 

My hope is that GENERATION HD2’s aim to treat individuals earlier in the disease could generate valuable insights for a major goal in the science of HD and other neurodegenerative diseases: a therapy to prevent symptoms from appearing in disease gene carriers like me.

After setback, Roche to run new clinical trial with Huntington’s disease gene silencing drug

 

After halting dosing in the historic Phase 3 clinical trial for its Huntington’s disease gene silencing drug tominersen last March, pharmaceutical giant Roche announced today that it will start a new, less ambitious Phase 2 trial, limited to younger adult patients with “less disease burden.” The goal is to measure tominersen’s efficacy against the progression of HD.

 

Disease burden is calculated using a person’s age and degree of genetic mutation: the higher the sum of those two factors, the higher the burden. Roche, after initial testing of the drug, skipped Phase 2, which typically tests safety and efficacy of different doses, to pursue a Phase 3 trial, which confirms safety and efficacy in a larger population. Now it is proceeding in a more typical manner.

 

Roche informed the global HD community about the new trial in a letter released today. Roche’s partner Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., the original developer of tominersen, also issued a press release.

 

“New exploratory post hoc analyses of GENERATION HD1 suggest that low exposure (less frequent dosing) tominersen may benefit younger adult patients with lower disease burden,” the Roche letter stated.

 

 

Low dosing meant volunteers received the drug every 16 weeks, while high dosing was every eight weeks.

 

“These findings, together with safety data of low exposure tominersen, support the continuation of the development program with a new Phase II clinical trial in younger adult patients with lower disease burden,” the letter continued. “While the findings are encouraging, confirmation in a randomised, placebo-controlled study is important.”

 

Post hoc analyses involve criteria set after data is seen, and “therefore they are not definitive,” the letter said. Because the trial was not specifically designed to run these analyses, the number of patients in the subgroups are small and the differences to placebo are not "statistically significant" and "could represent a chance result."

 

Even so, “these findings are promising and warrant a new study designed to test tominersen in this specific patient group,” stated Frank Bennett, Ph.D., Ionis' executive vice president, chief

scientific officer and franchise leader for neurological programs, in the press release. “This is an encouraging development for the HD community. We and Roche are grateful to the HD community's continued partnership, which has led to these important insights and a new scientific hypothesis [about tominersen].”

 

Maximizing benefits for HD patients

 

“It’s very exciting,” said Jody Corey-Bloom, M.D., Ph.D., the director of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) Center of Excellence at the University of California San Diego.

 

One of the GENERATION HD1 trial investigators, Dr. Corey-Bloom participated in a Roche-sponsored videoconference about the GENERATION HD1 findings that are serving as the basis for plans for a Phase 2 trial.

 

“They’ve analyzed the data in a very thoughtful manner,” Dr. Corey-Bloom said. “They’re hoping to really maximize benefits for at least a specific group of patients with HD, based on the results of their post hoc analysis.”

 

Roche is still planning the new trial. Therefore, it has not yet announced a timeline, sites, eligibility criteria, or information about dosing.

 

“This is just the news that should instill hope – a clear demonstration of the researchers’ commitment to regroup, redirect, and bravely move forward with its work on tominersen even after the challenges of 2021,” Martha Nance, M.D., the Center of Excellence director at Hennepin Health Care in Minneapolis, MN, commented by e-mail. “HD families, research scientists, and clinicians will need to work together in the coming years to determine when, whether, and how this drug can be delivered safely, effectively, and ethically to people in the earliest stages of HD.”

 

Representatives of Roche will present public updates on tominersen in previously scheduled webinars on January 20 for the European Huntington’s Disease Network (click here to register) and HDSA (click here to register). Another webinar, hosted by the European Huntington Association, will take place on January 24 (click here to register).

 

Roche is “resurrecting” tominersen in the “right way,” wrote Evaluate Vantage biopharma analyst Madeleine Armstrong. “Instead of running another phase 3, or indeed seeking approval, Roche is now going back to phase 2, although details are scant.”

 

With “no approved therapies for Huntington’s,” Roche “looks justified in trying again,” she added.

 

More results at upcoming conference

 

In an initial trial completed in 2017, Ionis had demonstrated that tominersen had successfully lowered the amount of the mutant, purportedly toxic huntingtin protein in the cerebral spinal fluid of a small group of volunteers.

 

Those impressive results led Roche to skip the standard Phase 2 trial and enter directly into Phase 3 (click here to read more). The GENERATION HD1 trial started in early 2019, enrolled a total of around 800 participants globally, and was to end in 2022.

 

However, in March 2021 a monitoring board conducting a standard review of trial data recommended that all dosing of tominersen in GENERATION HD1 be stopped. Roche decided to also stop dosing in a supporting trial. The following month Roche confirmed that trial data indicated that tominersen was ineffective and, in some cases, actually caused volunteers to worsen.

 

Roche is expected to present a detailed scientific update on tominersen at the 17th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference February 28-March 3 in Palm Springs, CA.

 

(Disclosure: I hold a symbolic amount of Ionis shares.)

Roche confirms tominersen as ineffective, while Triplet provides key details for trial of drug to slow major driver of Huntington’s disease

 

Following up on news that it had halted dosing, Roche has confirmed that its historic GENERATION HD1 clinical trial, aimed at the genetic causes of Huntington’s disease, failed to improve symptoms in study participants.

The disappointing trial outcome for the drug candidate tominersen was revealed on April 27 by Scott Schobel, M.D., M.Sc., Roche’s medical leader of GENERATION HD1, at the virtual 16th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference, sponsored by CHDI Foundation, Inc., the nonprofit virtual biotech focused solely on developing HD treatments and a collaborator in the effort.

 

More than 1,000 people registered for this greatly anticipated meeting.

 

“Nobody wanted this result,” Dr. Schobel said in his online talk, the first scientific presentation describing why an independent review committee had recommended, and Roche accepted, that GENERATION HD1 be halted. “This is a setback, and it’s a setback which is emotional. It’s a setback which we all feel, because, after being able to lower the huntingtin protein for the first time, there’s a lot of hope in that.”

 

An opportunity to learn

 

Dr. Schobel displayed a series of slides demonstrating tominersen’s lack of effect on trial volunteers, who showed “progressive decline,” reflected in key measures of cognition and control of bodily movements. Observations by physicians also showed “increasing severity” of disease in the participants, Dr. Schobel said.

 

Still, he said the researchers established a “new setpoint for the field”: reducing the level of the mutant protein in the early-stage tominersen clinical trial.

 

That achievement was a historic first, and many HD scientists still believe that this strategy can lead to an improvement in symptoms. However, it now remains for potential future trials to demonstrate that huntingtin-lowering can actually help patients.

 

Roche is “compelled” to use the trial results “as an opportunity to learn,” Dr. Schobel said. The company still has a “wealth of data” to analyze regarding tominersen and its implications for the huntingtin-lowering approach. The firm will share results with the HD community.

 

The Huntington's Disease Society of America will hold a webinar at noon Eastern time on April 29 with an update for the community on the Roche results. (Click here to register.)

 

 

Dr. Scott Schobel of Roche displays slide demonstrating decline in volunteers' condition in the GENERATION HD1 clinical trial at the 16th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference (screenshot by Gene Veritas, aka Kenneth P. Serbin)

 

Drug candidate’s target chosen

 

On this first day of the three-day conference, Irina Antonijevic, M.D., Ph.D., the chief medical officer at Triplet Therapeutics, Inc., revealed key details of the firm’s drug program to develop a genetic strategy that contrasts sharply with the idea of lowering the huntingtin protein. The firm also issued a press release.

 

Dr. Antonijevic focused on Triplet’s efforts to slow or stop a key driver of HD, somatic expansion, the mutant huntingtin gene’s tendency for continued expansion with age.

 

Triplet’s research exploits continuing breakthroughs in HD genetics, also the topic of this year’s Therapeutics Conference. Those advances have revealed that so-called modifier genes linked to the speeding or slowing of somatic expansion can hasten or delay the age of HD onset by just a few years or by as many as 40.

 

Triplet scientists and others believe that the longer that expansion, the more toxic the gene and its product, the huntingtin protein, become.

 

Building on these developments, in 2020 Triplet announced its drug candidate TTX-3360, aimed at slowing or stopping somatic expansion.

 

In her conference presentation, Dr. Antonijevic announced that the specific biochemical target of TTX-3360 is the modifier gene MSH3, involved in the maintenance and repair of DNA.

 

In studies of mice, Triplet has demonstrated safe and effective lowering of MSH3 using TTX-3360. Additional safety studies were done in nonhuman primates.

 

Injection directly into the brain

 

Like the Roche drug, TTX-3360 is an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO), a synthetic modified single strand of DNA. Both the early-stage trial of tominersen and GENERATION HD1 delivered ASOs via spinal tap.

 

However, Dr. Antonijevic announced that TTX-3360 will be introduced into the brain using an intracerebroventricular (ICV) injection. The ICV device is a small reservoir implanted at the top of the head with a catheter going into the brain. ICVs have been used in medical treatments since the 1960s, including injection of anti-cancer drugs.

 

Dr. Antonijevic explained that, in contrast with the spinal tap – whereby an ASO had to travel along the spine before entering the brain – the ICV will permit Triplet to get its drug deeper into the brain, including areas severely affected by HD.

 

With spinal taps, patients can experience pain and inflammation during dosing because of scarring that results from repeated dosing, Dr. Antonijevic asserted. The ICV permits easy withdrawal of cerebrospinal fluid (which bathes the brain) for monitoring of drug safety and efficacy, she added.

 

The ICV also allows for rapid dosing – perhaps even at home – whereas the spinal tap requires a visit to a doctor’s office, Dr. Antonijevic pointed out.

 

(According to one scientific article, an ICV can remain in place for life. However, long-term usage is not well understood. The device should be monitored for leakage or failure. If necessary, the device can be removed or replaced.)

 

At the HD Therapeutics Conference, Dr. Irina Antonijevic of Triplet Therapeutics discusses a slide comparing two methods of drug delivery: spinal taps (intrathecal injections) and intracerebroventricular injection (screenshot by Gene Veritas)

 

Triplet aims to file an investigational new drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug administration (and/or a clinical trial application in Europe or Canada) by year’s end for a Phase 1/2a study of TTX-3360, which will address primarily the safety and tolerability of the compound. Triplet will recruit presymptomatic and early symptomatic individuals for the trial.

 

Triplet also announced a pledge of one percent of its equity to a “patient support fund,” to be managed independently, to support patients suffering from HD and other, similar disorders, known as repeat expansion disorders. The fund will help patients and families secure access to care and therapies.

 

(For background on the Triplet clinical trial program, click here. Stay tuned to this blog here for further coverage of the conference.)

 

(For additional coverage of the conference, click here).

Tough news for Huntington’s, other neurological disease patients: Roche halts dosing in historic clinical trial on signs of inefficacy

 

Calling it “tough news to share” and “even more difficult to receive,” pharmaceutical giant Roche announced on March 22 that it has halted dosing in the firm’s historic Phase 3 Huntington's disease clinical trial of its gene silencing drug tominersen, GENERATION HD1, because of unfavorable efficacy data, as seen by an independent review committee.

 

“The committee recently met for a pre-planned review of the latest safety and efficacy data from GENERATION HD1 and made a recommendation about the investigational therapy’s potential benefit/risk profile,” wrote David West, Roche’s senior director, for Global Patient Partnership, in a letter addressed to the international HD community. “Based on the committee’s recommendation, we will permanently stop dosing with tominersen and placebo in the GENERATION HD1 study.”

 

GENERATION HD1 began in early 2019, paused for several months to recalibrate dosing, and became fully enrolled in April 2020. Volunteers were to receive the drug over 25 months, and Roche had expected to finish the trial and report results in 2022. Tominersen developer Ionis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Roche’s partner, had completed a Phase 1/2a trial of the drug (testing for mainly safety and tolerability) in 2017. That trial was so successful that Roche skipped a full-blown Phase 2 and went directly to Phase 3, GENERATION HD1.

 

West noted that the review committee’s recommendations resulted not from “any new emergent safety concern, but on a broad assessment of the benefit/risk” for those receiving the drug as compared to those getting the placebo.

 

This means that the drug demonstrated an “unfavorable efficacy trend,” an official of U.S. Roche’s subsidiary Genentech wrote me in an e-mail. If successful, the trial would have demonstrated that tominersen could slow, halt, or even reverse HD symptoms.

 

“This is brutal and I am absolutely devastated for our patients and families,” Jody Corey-Bloom, M.D., Ph.D., the director of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) Center of Excellence at the University of California, San Diego, wrote me.

 

Trial participants in Dr. Corey-Bloom’s clinic were among those taking part in GENERATION HD1. “I am glad that Roche will continue following patients for safety and clinical outcomes,” she added.

 

Veteran HD physician LaVonne Goodman expressed a similar sentiment. “Hope has been so very high for this drug; our community will feel not just disappointment, but real grief,” Dr. Goodman wrote me. “However, we’re accustomed to grief, and are resilient.  I think part of the community message should be that supporting each other is vitally important now.”

 

HDSA Chief Scientific Officer George Yohrling, Ph.D., called the news “devastating.” “HD families around the world had their hopes held high that this experimental drug could one day soon become an effective therapy for HD,” Dr. Yohrling stated. “While this is clearly not the news we wanted to hear, I am confident that in the coming weeks the Generation HD1 data will help the scientific community understand why tominersen did not meet its desired outcome.”

 

Robert Pacifici, Ph.D., the chief scientific officer for CHDI Foundation, Inc., the nonprofit virtual biotech dedicated to discovering HD therapies and a collaborator of Roche and Ionis, also commented on the development.

 

“Roche’s decision to discontinue dosing in most of its Huntington’s disease studies based on a recommendation from the unblinded [with access to data] Independent Data Monitoring Committee that periodically reviews study data is a very disappointing outcome,” Dr. Pacifici wrote. “However, knowing our colleagues at Roche we are confident that this decision has been made in good faith with the best interests of study participants uppermost in mind.”

 

 

No new safety concern caused the halt

 

The stop to the Roche trial underscores the fact that an effective treatment still eludes not only HD scientists, but also researchers of Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), and other neurological conditions.

 

The reviewers who recommended the halt to GENERATION HD1 work separately from Roche. The committee has not yet shared its specific reasoning or data with Roche.

 

“It is important to note that the recommendation is not based on any new emergent safety concern,” West’s letter stated.

 

Roche has notified the clinical trial sites in the 18 participating countries of the halt. The sites are contacting the 791 symptomatic volunteers who had enrolled in the program.

 

The participants were receiving intrathecal (spinal) injections of tominersen or a placebo. Participants in GEN-EXTEND (an extension study for participants coming from any Roche HD study) will also no longer receive doses.

 

“It is our intention to provide as much information as we can to the community, which at this time is limited until we have accessed and analyzed full data,” West’s letter explained.

 

West acknowledged “the tremendous contribution of the families who are participating in these studies, as well as the broader Huntington’s community for their collaboration.”

 

Next steps depend on the data

 

Although Roche has stopped giving tominersen to the volunteers, the trial has not yet ended.

 

“The studies will remain ongoing (without further dosing in GENERATION HD1 and GEN-EXTEND) and it is intended that study participants will be followed by their physicians for safety and clinical outcomes,” West stated. Roche has not provided a timeline for the remainder of the work to be completed.

 

A Q&A appended to West’s letter states that “Roche remains committed to the HD space and our studies are continuing,” and data from GENERATION HD1 “will advance our understanding of tominersen and inform research for other disease modifying treatments.” It adds: “In addition to tominersen, the Roche family of companies is investigating gene therapy approaches to treating Huntington’s disease.”

 

The conclusions about GENERATION HD1 – and possible next steps by Roche and Ionis­­ – will depend on the analysis of the independent reviewers’ explanations and all of the massive data from the Phase 3 trial.

 

As Dr. Pacifici noted, only when data from the independent review committee has been “shared with the wider HD community” will it become possible to “form a scientific opinion” about the halting of the trial.

 

A perplexing result

 

Ionis held a public conference call on March 22 to answer questions about the Roche announcement.

 

“This is the largest Huntington’s trial ever conducted,” stated Ionis CEO Brett Monia, Ph.D. “It was conducted on a wealth of information.”

 

Monia stated that, “while we are saddened by today’s outcome, we are committed to the HD community and focused on delivering treatments for this and other devastating neurological diseases.”

 

Monia added, “Although this is a disappointing setback for Ionis and the HD community, we are confident in the potential of our technology platform to address many neurological diseases.”

 

Various questioners on the call asked Dr. Monia and Ionis scientists to speculate about the reasons for the halt and future potential approaches using the company’s technology (antisense oligonucleotides, or ASOs), but the Ionis officials emphasized that answers are premature without access to the data.

 

“We are still strong believers in the ASO approach,” Dr. Monia asserted.

 

However, Ionis Chief Scientific Officer Frank Bennett, Ph.D., the long-time coordinator of the firm’s HD program, added that the news of the potential ineffectiveness of using an ASO to reduce the amount of huntingtin protein in patients was “perplexing and disappointing to us,” leaving many unanswered questions.

 

Eric Swayze, Ph.D., Ionis’s executive vice president for research and one of the developers of the ASO, reminded the participants on the call of a fundamental reality of HD: “It’s a complex disease.”

 

Dr. Monia added that “one silver lining” in the halt to GENERATION HD1 was that it did not, as noted above, result from a concern about safety.

 

Diversification necessary

 

Although the pioneering Roche-Ionis program had electrified the HD world with the hope of the first effective treatment, the HD research community has also deliberately diversified the approaches to treating HD.

 

Thus, companies like Triplet Therapeutics, Inc. have leveraged publicly available knowledge gained from the Roche/Ionis program and others to plan their own, unique drug development strategies.

 

Triplet aims to start a clinical trial in the second half of this year for a potential drug targeted at stopping the mutant huntingtin gene’s tendency for continued expansion with age. That expansion compromises brain cells and triggers disease. In this respect, HD is known as a repeat expansion disorder (RED), with the triplets of the genetic code CAG recurring too many times and thus causing disease.

 

As a Triplet scientist explained last year, the Roche/Ionis approach is like “putting a brake” on the disease, whereas Triplet’s ASO will target the expansion of the gene and therefore seek to “remove the foot on the gas.” (Click here to read more).

 

Using the same mechanism, in addition to HD, Triplet hopes to develop transformative treatments for many of the more than 50 other REDs. For REDs of the central nervous system, it would use the same drug as for Huntington’s.

 

Although unavailable for comment on the Roche announcement, Triplet executives offered encouragement in an e-mail to me: “Triplet’s thoughts are with the HD community, and our clinical development plans in HD and other repeat expansion disorders remain on track and unchanged.”

 

As one scientist wrote me (and as I also felt), the Roche announcement was like a punch to the gut. However, I am also heartened by the potential of other clinical trials like Triplet’s. (I will further explore the implications of the Roche trial halt in upcoming articles.)

 

To echo Dr. Goodman’s words, our community and its scientists are indeed resilient.

 

(For more on the Roche announcement, see the article in HDBuzz).

 

(Disclosure: I hold a symbolic amount of Ionis shares.)

Happy Thanksgiving! And hail to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries – and the scientists!

Thanksgiving this year is going to be radically different for many Americans, including my family.

 

I will celebrate my favorite holiday just with my wife Regina, home in San Diego.

 

As it has for many Americans, the COVID-19 pandemic has prevented us from hosting our usual small group of friends.

 

After eating a healthy brunch, we plan to have a Zoom call with our HD-free “miracle” daughter Bianca, a junior history major at the University of Pennsylvania. We are ever thankful that Bianca did not have to face the devastating possibility of juvenile HD. We will miss her, but are reassured knowing that she will spend the day with her boyfriend and his immediate family in the East.

 

We also hope to Zoom with some of our local friends. 

 

However, despite the terrible pall cast by the pandemic over the 2020 holiday season, I feel extremely optimistic that researchers will find a highly effective vaccine for the coronavirus.

 

The announcements of preliminary data by Moderna and the team of Pfizer and BioNTech revealed that their vaccine candidates reduced COVID-19 infections by 95 percent in clinical trials.

 

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), described the Moderna data as “stunningly impressive,” noting that he would have settled for 70-75 percent efficacy in a vaccine.

 

“It is really a spectacular result that I don’t think anybody had anticipated would be this good,” Dr. Fauci said. He had similar praise for the Pfizer/BioNTech data.

 

Both of these trials use genetic approaches: they introduce the virus’s own genes into cells to provoke an immune response.

 

According to the New York Times’ Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker, several dozen other companies have embarked on clinical trial programs using some form of approach based on genetics or other cutting-edge strategies. Only ten projects are making vaccines using the traditional approach of injecting weakened or dead coronaviruses.

 

In all, scientists are testing 54 vaccines in clinical trials, and at least 87 more are under investigation in animals.

 

Genetics-based approaches are familiar to the HD community, where researchers have investigated the potential of gene silencing drugs for more than a decade. Researchers in the lead program, Roche’s historic GENERATION HD1 Phase 3 clinical trial, hope to analyze data in 2022. 

 

When I heard of the initial reports of Moderna’s genetics-based approach, I felt deeply confident that humanity would ultimately defeat the coronavirus. 

 

The potentially record speed in getting a vaccine to the world is testimony to the ingenuity, dedication, and focus of the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, which I have observed with deep interest in my nearly quarter century as an HD advocate and student of the science – and as a writer summarizing the science in simple terms.

 

In October, posting on Facebook an article on the bold Triplet Therapeutics clinical trial program – yet another genetics-based effort – I wrote the following: “Hail to the many imaginative and hard-working companies in America’s pharmaceutical industry!”

 

I also salute the scientists involved, and the many pharmaceutical and biotech firms of other nations engaged in the fight against COVID-19 and HD.

 

Also, we must not forget the millions of doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers and first responders who have heroically attempted to hold the line against COVID-19, thus giving the researchers the time necessary to develop the vaccines.

 

Thanksgiving is our quintessential American holiday. This year, with the pandemic, it takes on a global significance. Across all cultures and nations, the virus has led us to realize once again our common humanity – and the collective efforts needed to safeguard life for all.

 

 

Photo by Bianca Serbin, taken in fall 2009 at the San Diego Botanic Garden (click here to read more).

Annual Huntington Study Group meeting reveals an HD community energized to aid families, develop treatments

Moved online because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 27th Annual Huntington Study Group Meeting nevertheless revealed an HD community committed to aiding affected families and developing cutting-edge treatments.

Originally scheduled for Atlanta, GA, the virtual conference took place from October 29-31, with more than 800 scientific and medical participants from around the world. The meeting featured two days of presentations concerning care of HD-afflicted individuals, as well as updates on key clinical trial programs, aimed at producing drugs.

 

On Family Day, which drew an estimated 180 additional people, the affected, caregivers, and advocates heard both expert presentations on coping with HD and highlights regarding research.

 

Research moving full steam ahead

 

Martha Nance, M.D., a long-time member of the Huntington Study Group (HSG) and the director of Family Day organizing committee, kicked off that event with a reflection on the “highlights and lowlights” of 2020 so far. A neurologist and frequent sounding board for this blog, Dr. Nance is also the medical director of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) Center of Excellence at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis, MN.

 

We all know the lowlights, Dr. Nance said: the COVID-19 pandemic, the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the 2020 election with its uncertainty, and climate change.

 

“For me, a highlight of this entire year was this meeting,” Dr. Nance said, referring to the great progress in HD research. “The last two days we heard about more things than you can shake a stick at.”

 

Dr. Nance listed the important developments detailed in the scientific talks, including several innovative ways to potentially block the harmful effects of the mutant huntingtin gene. Both the scientists and family members got updates on GENERATION HD1, the historic, in-progress gene silencing clinical trial by Roche aimed at reducing the amount of toxic huntingtin protein in the brain.

 

At the conference, several speakers referred to temporary slowdowns in research programs because of the new safety protocols resulting from COVID-19. Dr. Nance also noted difficulties in accessing some HD community members because of the pandemic in the U.S. and abroad, although she also has observed a helpful “explosion” in telemedicine.

 

However, despite the uncertainty about overall scientific research funding because of the COVID-19 crisis, “research is alive and well in Huntington’s disease,” Dr. Nance stated. “If what happened at this meeting continues, research in Huntington’s disease is moving full steam ahead.”

 

“I found the meeting to be energizing,” Dr. Nance concluded in an e-mail to me on October 31.

 

For detailed reports of the research presentations, see HDBuzz’s coverage by clicking here and here.

 

For the next year, HSG is providing access to on-demand recordings of the conference talks and other events. Click here to register for access.

 

‘Heroes,’ and a thank-you for me

 

Dr. Nance devoted most of her Family Day introduction to counterpoising the difficulties of 2020 with the stories of “heroes” who have stepped up to assist others in the HD community by exercising their unique skills.

 

“We need to hear about some people who’ve done good things,” she explained. “I hope that you can emboldened, empowered by some of these heroes.”

 

Dr. Nance – to my surprise and appreciation – began with the example of me, Gene Veritas (aka Kenneth P. Serbin), the author of this blog, now in its sixteenth year. Dr. Nance recalled how she and I had worked together on our college newspaper (click here to read more). She said that I use my journalistic skills to help inform the HD community, and to be “very up front about my struggles and fears” as a carrier of the HD mutation.

 

I write in this article about myself because Dr. Nance stressed how important it is for the HD community to be informed about its social ramifications.

 

‘I can’t breathe’

 

Dr. Nance recalled my September 2014 report on Jeffrey Bane, a West Virginia man arrested because the police misunderstood his HD symptoms to be the result of narcotics abuse (click here to read more).

 

Dr. Nance replayed the video of a bystander who had filmed Jeff suffering injuries as the police held him to the ground, thinking that, with his involuntary, HD-caused movements, he was resisting arrest. “I can’t breathe,” Jeff said desperately as he asked the officers for help.

 

Jeff only received the help of paramedics after the police had held him to the ground for almost ten minutes, Dr. Nance pointed out. 

 

Then she asked the attendees “to just take a deep breath, pause, and think for a minute.”

 

After 54 seconds elapsed, she resumed her presentation. “Hopefully you took a deep breath,” she said. “I think probably you felt anger, hate, sorrow, sadness, fear, anxiety.”

 

She continued: “We can’t change something that happened six years ago. What we can do is try as hard as we can to keep events like this from happening against in the HD community.”

 

Dr. Nance noted that HDSA has a toolkit for educating first responders, police officers, and fire personnel about HD. The organization provides other resources (such as a special HD ID card) to help HD-affected individuals and their families prepare for potential encounters with the police, she added.

 

(I have explored these crucial themes in other articles. Click here to read more.)

 

‘Your life matters’

 

In examples surely moving to the audience, Dr. Nance presented the stories of several other HD “heroes.” 

 

Inducted into the Minnesota Auctioneers’ Hall of Fame in 2005, Joe, whose wife and daughter died of HD, took “his grief, his sadness, his sorrow” and raised money and bought electric toothbrushes for hundreds of HD-afflicted people, Dr. Nance recalled.

 

As a ten-year-old watching his mother face HD, B. J. Viau started an annual basketball hoop-a-thon that over the years raised some $750,000 for HD research. Among other things, B. J. went on to become one of the founders of the highly active international Huntington’s Disease Youth Organization. 

 

Diagnosed at ten with juvenile HD, Elli started kickball tournaments to support the cause. She became an internationally recognized HD advocate.

 

Dr. Nance also recognized the 791 “heroes” who are taking part in the GENERATION HD1 clinical trial.

 

With HD, she said, it’s easy to become angry, sad, and depressed. However, people can also “stand up tall” to help others. We need more everyday heroes, she added.

 

“Your life matters – not to take away from anybody else whose life matters,” Dr. Nance said in closing. “What you do makes a difference.”

 

Dr. Martha Nance (left) praises the advocacy of juvenile Huntington's disease-affected Elli Hofmeister (in images at right) at the virtual 2020 HSG Family Day (screenshot by Gene Veritas).