Drug Development

Previous clinical trials for anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies in preclinical Alzheimer's Disease (AD) have reported stopping screening in persons aged 55-64 (Holdridge, 2024) and/or restricting screening in persons aged 55-64 to persons with additional risk factors (Sperling, 2020) in favor of participants aged 65+. In this study, we look at the difference in screen failure rates of participants aged 55-64 relative to participants aged 65+ for a study of early AD within the same class of drug.

In 2024, 185 persons were screened for a Phase 2 clinical trial of an anti-amyloid monoclonal antibody in early AD across two sites in the Irvine Clinical site network, an independent commercial site network in California. Of these 185 participants, 46 were aged 55-64, and 139 were aged 65+. The overall screen failure rate was 74.1% (147 screen fails).

For the 46 participants between 55-64 years old, the screen fail rate was 78.2%. The screen fail rate for participants aged 65+ was 79.9%. A chi-square test for independence shows that this difference was not statistically significant (x2=-0.0005, p=0.9828). Additionally, when running a logistic regression that allows for controlling of demographic variables (years of education, race / ethnicity) and screening location, the effect of being in the 55-64 age range was actually negative - less likely to screen fail - and also not statistically significant (z = -0.642, p = 0.521).

For the early AD study considered in this analysis, participants aged 55-64 years old did not have an inferior screen fail rate relative to participants aged 65+. Study-wide decisions to exclude participants aged 55-64 in preclinical AD may not necessarily be translatable to studies of early AD within the same class of drug and with similar pTau217 screening enrichment strategies.