Happy New Year from HDSA! To wrap up 2019, we received some exciting clinical trial news. Wave Life Sciences is conducting the PRECISION-HD1 and PRECISION-HD2 studies to test two experimental huntingtin-lowering drugs. On December 30th, 2019, Wave announced the top-line results of the PRECISION-HD2 study in a press release. They also released a letter to the HD community.
There’s a lot of info there, so here’s the scoop on what this means.
- The drug was safe and well-tolerated in people with HD: there were no dangerous side effects.
- The group of participants who received the drug had lower levels of toxic huntingtin protein at the end of the study, compared to the group that did not receive drug.
- Because of these promising safety and huntingtin-lowering results, Wave will be adding a new group of participants to both PRECISION studies, who will receive a higher dose of the drug.
The results of both trials are expected in the second half of 2020. It’s an unpredicted extension to the clinical trial, but important to determine whether a higher dose could have a stronger effect. This is still an early safety study, first and foremost – we don’t have any information about whether the Wave drug could help with HD symptoms. But so far it is safe and can lower mutant huntingtin. These are encouraging results to kick off the new year.
Our friends at HDBuzz also unpacked the news in their latest post.
