Lisa Ricciardi, president and CEO of Cognition Therapeutics was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access. Cognition Therapeutics is a neuroscience company that is developing oral medications to treat neurodegenerative disorders, with recent breakthroughs in the treatment of dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) and Alzheimer's. The company says its drug candidate, CT1812, showed very promising results from its recently completed phase 2 trial. The drug will now progress to phase 3.
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00:00Good morning to you. Pleasure having you here. I'm really excited to talk with you today and just off the jump here, give us an overview of Cognition Therapeutics if you want.
00:14Sure. Cognition Therapeutics is a public company. We took it public in October of 21. We work in the area of neurodegenerative diseases.
00:24This year, we read out two trials, one in Alzheimer's disease, and that's mild to moderate patients.
00:30And just in December, we read out our trial in Lewy body dementia, which I'll refer to as DLB, dementia with Lewy bodies.
00:38And I have to say, we are so pleased, Dan, to think we could have a clinical leadership position for a million and a half patients that have no treatment options available.
00:49We have an oral program, oral drug, progressing in studies.
00:54No, it's such an important space. It's such important work you're doing. And let's talk about it.
00:59Dementia with Lewy bodies, I know, is not as well known as other similar conditions like Alzheimer's disease or Parkinson's.
01:05What is the scale of the condition and how many patients are affected by dementia with Lewy bodies?
01:13Great question. So with Alzheimer's disease, we generally say there are six million people.
01:19I'm talking only in the US. And then there's a million and a half with dementia with Lewy bodies.
01:25The truth is Parkinson's disease is about the same size and everyone has heard of Parkinson's disease.
01:32Our principal investigator always says Lewy body dementia is the biggest dementia you've never heard of.
01:40And he's right. It's often confused. The symptoms are varied. It's complex to get to the diagnosis.
01:47And when you get there, there are no treatments, which is why we're so excited about our results.
01:52No, absolutely. Let's let's talk about that. I mean, you're on the forefront of this.
01:55What treatments do exist and how effective are they?
01:59When we go to talks on Lewy body dementia treatments, Jim Galvin will put up a slide that says treatments for DLV.
02:06It's a blank slide. People treat symptoms. So agitation, things like that, sleep disorders.
02:12But there are no treatments, Dan. And we believe we may have a drug that is disease modifying.
02:19Why? Because our drug prevents there are toxic proteins in the brain and we prevent them from binding where they kill neurons.
02:28Simply put, we think we can change the course of disease.
02:33Think how many people, how many families that can help.
02:37Tell us a bit more, if you will, Lisa, about CT 1812.
02:41What's the mechanism of action and how could it help treat the patients with dementia with Lewy bodies?
02:47Sure. So we describe our drug as an oligomer antagonist. What on earth does that mean?
02:54It means that when toxic proteins want to bind, we prevent the binding.
03:00If I made it that simple, it would be really clear. In Alzheimer's disease, everyone's heard of amyloid.
03:06You don't want amyloid in the brain. In Lewy body dementia, same thing, but it's called alpha-synuclein.
03:13And the truth is both patients have both sets of toxic proteins.
03:19And that's why we were so excited to do this study. Like we affect both.
03:24We've proven it. And then we saw the clinical results.
03:28It's incredible. Let's talk about the investor side.
03:31I know investors seem to have really appreciated, Lisa, that phase two data report in December.
03:36What are the key takeaways from Cognition's perspective that investors should understand?
03:41Great question. So the first thing we want investors to understand, Dan,
03:45is we had a consistent impact across all the areas of symptoms that we measured.
03:53These patients are complicated. They have problems with behavior, cognition, like Alzheimer's disease,
04:00function and movement, function. We're talking brushing your teeth, activities of daily living.
04:07The biggest challenge for these patients is really on the behavior side, and it's more for their caregivers.
04:13You're talking about agitation, aggression, hallucinations, sleeplessness, apathy.
04:20Picture an elderly couple. Our PI always says, you know, an 85 year old woman will forgive her husband
04:27for not remembering if it's Monday or Tuesday. But if this person's really aggressive,
04:33she can't take care of him. And off they go to a nursing home.
04:37So when we looked at this data and saw we impacted everything in the study, we were so pleased.
04:46And then you get notes from patients and caregivers more than the patients, the caregivers.
04:51I received a letter saying, if my husband didn't have to go into a nursing home, he'd be writing this email with me.
04:58But he did really well while he was on your study. So that makes you say, you know what?
05:03We're going to find a way. We're going to phase three. There's something active here.
05:08And that's what we saw with our Alzheimer's trials as well. A drug that's active.
05:14Well, let's talk about phase three. What are your plans going forward for scientific presentations?
05:19Obviously, which are so important. Interactions with the FDA to plan phase three.
05:23Great question. Thank you. In about three weeks, we're going to Amsterdam.
05:28In that setting will be the International Lewy Body Dementia Conference where all the experts in the world get together.
05:35And we're really pleased to have a podium presentation to be front and center talking about the results of our study.
05:42From there, we're going to meet with the FDA. We'll have one meeting on Alzheimer's disease and another meeting on Lewy Body Dementia.
05:50And it's from those meetings, Dan, that we learn what's the size of the trial.
05:54What are the endpoints? How long are they? What are the costs of the trial?
05:57So everything progresses in a stepwise fashion.
06:01I couldn't tell you today what the trial looks like because we have to discuss it and gain alignment.
06:06Sure. Very, very excited to see how those presentations go. Of course, I know you are as well.
06:11And I know the company seemed to have a very strong end to 2024.
06:14Can you give us kind of a summary of what happened and why you're so excited for 2025?
06:18Terrific. Yeah. Thank you. So in 24, in the middle of the year, we received the results of our Alzheimer's trial, as I said, mild to moderate disease.
06:28And what we showed was with an oral pill, we're talking once a day oral drug.
06:33Patients had a greater slowing of progression, greater or equal to the antibodies.
06:41You're familiar with the antibodies which require infusions and imaging.
06:45This is an oral drug. We were very happy with that data.
06:50In October, we read out more data from that study and saw that there was a group of patients that showed no progression of their Alzheimer's disease in six months.
07:01So what you're really saying is you're giving people time back, months of being able to interact with their families, but dress and bathe and drive and figure out how to get home.
07:12So those were two things that happened in 24, followed by the results of our DLB trial.
07:18So we take those things in total. We say to ourselves, we have an active program.
07:23It's not a guess. It's not a hint. These signals are strong and they merit the thought and design and investment to go to the next phase of development.
07:33I love it. And like we said, this can affect so many people in such a positive way and very exciting times that I know for cognition therapeutics.
07:41It was an absolute pleasure talking with you today, Lisa. Thank you so much for your time.
07:45Thank you. Really appreciate you giving us a chance to talk about what we're doing here. My pleasure.