AI-116: Dementia
About: AI-116 is a novel combination drug candidate made up of cannabidiol (CBD) and an off-patent pharmaceutical ingredient. It is conceptualised to be a potential treatment for dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.
Immediate goal: to complete a broad range of state-of-the-art experimental techniques to assess AI-116. To identify a combination drug candidate capable of potentially outperforming established and widely accepted treatments typically used to manage dementia.
Research Partner: Professor Garrie Arumugam’s laboratory at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia.
Next Steps: Clinical trials, subject to pre-clinical success and regulatory approvals.
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Dementia is a broad term used to describe a decline in cognitive function that affects a person's ability to perform daily activities. A person with dementia has two or more specific difficulties, including decline in memory, reasoning, language, coordination, mood and behaviour. The most common causes of dementia include Alzheimer's disease, vascular dementia, lewy body dementia, frontotemporal dementia, Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease.
Alzheimer's disease represents about 70% of all cause dementia and is characterized by the formation of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain, which is thought to lead to progressive degeneration of brain cells and memory loss. The primary focus of dementia treatment in recent decades has remained on managing symptoms and slowing the progression of the diseases underlying dementia.
From a medical and research perspective, the diseases that cause dementia remain complex with no cures. There is an urgent medical need for advancements in our understanding of dementia’s etiology, the development of better diagnostic tools for early detection, and new, more effective treatments. AI-116 is Algorae’s combination drug candidate that is currently undertaking a broad array of preclinical tests to analyse its performance in various established models of dementia research.
Dementia constitutes a significant global health concern. As of 2020, over 55 million people worldwide are living with dementia, and this number is projected to triple by 2050 as average life expectancy continues to increase. The global dementia drugs market size was valued at more than US$8.7B in 2021 and is projected to reach US$19.7B by 2031, growing at a CAGR of 8.5%.
Principal Investigator
Professor Garrie Arumugam
Professor Garrie Arumugam is professor of physiology at La Trobe University. He completed his bachelor’s degree in medical science with honors in 1998 at the University of Sydney and holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Pharmacology from the University of Queensland. He completed his post-doctoral training at the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in Shreveport, USA in the research laboratory of Professor Neil Granger and at the National Institute of Health, Baltimore, USA in the laboratory of Professor Mark Mattson.
His research focuses predominantly on investigating neuronal cell death mechanisms in stroke and vascular dementia. Professor Arumugam has published his work extensively, with over 185 articles in diverse high-impact journals including Nature Medicine, Circulation, PNAS, Nature Communications, Molecular Psychiatry, Annals Neurology, and Cell Metabolism. Professor Arumugam has over 20,000 (Google Scholar) career citations and has also authored several academic book chapters.
