Anavex Life Sciences Announces New Findings On The Shared Biology Between Autism Spectrum Disorder And Alzheimer's Disease
Benzinga Newsdesk 6 months ago
News
Multiple peer-reviewed publications point to biological link between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), including shared disruptions in autophagy.Epidemiological data show that autistic adults
- Multiple peer-reviewed publications point to biological link between autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD), including shared disruptions in autophagy.
- Epidemiological data show that autistic adults may be diagnosed with Alzheimer's and related dementias at rates up to 8 times higher than the general population, with onset occurring years or decades earlier than typical.
- Converging human genetic evidence links numerous high-confidence ASD risk genes — including TSC1/TSC2, PTEN, SHANK3, and FMRP — to impaired cellular autophagy, establishing autophagy dysfunction as a shared molecular substrate across genetically diverse forms of ASD.
- Synaptic dysfunction in ASD is now understood to arise, in substantial part, from a failure of autophagy-dependent synaptic pruning — causing an excess of poorly regulated synaptic connections and disrupted excitatory–inhibitory balance in neural circuits.
- The brain's extracellular matrix (ECM) is pathologically altered in ASD and is bidirectionally coupled to autophagy.
- Restoration of autophagy impairment, now emerging as a central shared pathway in both ASD and AD, is precisely the biological system targeted by blarcamesine through its activation of SIGMAR1.
- Blarcamesine has demonstrated restoration of autophagy through SIGMAR1 activation in preclinical models and has shown clinical effects in Phase IIb/III trials in early Alzheimer's disease, Phase II/III in Rett syndrome (a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by MECP2 mutation), and Phase II in Parkinson's disease dementia.
- Collectively, these data provide a scientific basis for advancing blarcamesine into pivotal clinical studies, subject to further evaluation and regulatory considerations.