Targacept : Decision by AstraZeneca to Advance AZD1446 in Alzheimer’s Disease

January 05, 2012 - Targacept, Inc. (NASDAQ: TRGT), a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company developing novel NNR Therapeutics™, announced that AstraZeneca has informed the company that it plans to progress the development of Targacept’s product candidate AZD1446 as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

AZD1446 is a selective modulator of the alpha4beta2 neuronal nicotinic receptor that arose out of a research collaboration conducted by Targacept and AstraZeneca. Under the terms of a 2005 collaborative research and license agreement, AstraZeneca is responsible for conducting and funding the development and potential commercialization of AZD1446. The next clinical trial of AZD1446 is expected to be a Phase 2 study as an adjunct treatment to donepezil in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease... Targacept's Press Release -

AstraZeneca and Targacept : top-line results from Phase IIb study of AZD3480 in Alzheimer’s disease

September 15, 2008 – AstraZeneca (NYSE:AZN) and Targacept, Inc. announced that results from the Phase IIb clinical trial of AZD3480 (TC-1734) conducted by AstraZeneca in mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease were inconclusive.

In the 12-week placebo-controlled study, known as the Sirocco trial, neither the active comparator donepezil nor AZD3480 met the trial’s criteria for statistical significance on the primary outcome measure, ADAS-Cog (Alzheimer’s Disease Assessment Scale – Cognition Subscale.) Both results were impacted by an improvement in the placebo group.

At two of the three doses tested, AZD3480 showed an improvement on the secondary outcome measures ADCS-CGIC (Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study – Clinical Global Impression of Change, a 7-point scale), a widely accepted measure of clinician assessment of change in patients’ behavior and ability to function, and MMSE (Mini Mental State Examination, a 30-point scale), a quantitative cognition scale commonly used by neurologists in a clinical setting. Of the three AZD3480 doses, the middle dose performed best on both measures (0.5 point improvement, ADCS-CGIC and 0.9 point improvement, MMSE). Donepezil also showed an improvement on ADCS-CGIC (0.2 point improvement) and the MMSE (1.0 point improvement). Neither donepezil nor AZD3480 showed improvement in any domain of the Cognitive Drug Research computerized test battery in the pooled dataset of all subjects... AstraZeneca's Press Release - Targacept's Press Release -