How the world's first drug for amyloid disease works

Scientists from The Scripps Research Institute and Pfizer Inc. have published a new study showing how a new drug called tafamidis (Vyndaqel®) works. Tafamidis, approved for use in Europe and currently under review by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is the first medication approved by a major regulatory agency to treat an amyloid disease, a class of conditions that include Alzheimer's. Tafamidis treats a deadly nerve disease caused by transthyretin (TTR) amyloid fibril formation, or the accumulation of abnormal assemblies of the TTR protein. The drug inhibits TTR aggregation, and clinical trials have shown that it delays the typical progression of nerve destruction in polyneuropathy patients. "The details in this new paper, combined with clinical trial data, show for the first time that an amyloid disease can be successfully treated by reducing the rate of amyloid formation," said Jeffery W. Kelly, chair of the Department of Molecular and Experimental Medicine, the Lita Annenberg Hazen Professor of Chemistry, and member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at Scripps Research. Kelly is a senior author of the new paper, which appears in an advance, online Early Edition issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An Array of Progressive Symptoms While the naturally occurring or "wild type" transthyretin protein is prone to aggregate in older people causing cardiac disease, a variety of destabilizing mutations lead either to a primary cardiomyopathy or to early onset forms of polyneuropathy, known as TTR familial amyloid polyneuropathy, affecting about 10,000 people worldwide. Familial amyloid polyneuropathy compromises the peripheral and autonomic nervous systems, with symptoms including sensory deprivation and pain, muscle weakness and wasting, and alternating constipation and diarrhea. In some familial amyloid polyneuropathy patients, cardiomyopathy can present later in the course of the disease. In transthyretin amyloid diseases that present primarily as a cardiomyopathy, doctors have been able to stave off heart failure with a liver and heart transplant; familial amyloid polyneuropathy patients receiving a liver transplant can benefit, since the liver is the primary source of mutant, disease-associated TTR. For the 90 percent of patients surviving transplantation, this surgical form of gene therapy slows familial amyloid polyneuropathy progression, but does not stop it as the wild type transthyretin protein can continue to form amyloid. Left untreated, the TTR amyloidoses are relentlessly progressive and inevitably fatal, with a course of about a decade from initial symptoms to death.