In the 1980s, Professor Claude Wischik made a discovery that could ultimately revolutionise the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia that, to this day, remains largely untreatable.
The mild-mannered Australian academic, who has been based at the University of Aberdeen since 1997, pinpointed the very building blocks of the condition, tau proteins.
Then in the 1990s he made a further discovery, this time that the proteins could tangle abnormally within brain cells and spread like a virus, similar to the process seen in mad cow disease.
The result, as so many people know from seeing a loved one diminish in front of their eyes, is the progressive and inexorable deterioration of mental activity, including memory, personality and judgement.
Prof Wischik originally inherited the research topic as a PhD student in Cambridge. And while it sparked an academic passion within him, working towards a cure only became a personal quest when he carried out clinical work in rural Aberdeenshire.
“All the tragedies that are happening just quietly in the little farms and villages are heartbreaking,” he said.
“It’s all very quiet. Nobody really sees it, but on the inside, for the lives of the families, it’s utterly distressing. So it deserves one’s best efforts.”
Seeing firsthand the effects of Alzheimer’s disease on the lives of unassuming people in places such as Fraserburgh and Macduff affected him deeply, and provided the extra spark that would lead him to the most important discovery yet: that the disease’s degenerative process could be slowed dramatically with the right chemicals.
Flash forward to today, Prof Wischik lies at the cusp of launching his self-designed drug which could change the lives of literally millions around the world.
A TARGET IN MIND
The drug, LMTX, is Prof Wischik’s magnum opus. The sum total of the 64-year-old’s work thus far.
Speaking on the phone from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where he was visiting investors of this £390million body of research, which is being coordinated by his own company, TauRx Therapeutics, he compared his career to “flying a particular vector”.
“That vector is bringing a particular product to market in the shortest possible time to help people,” he said. “I think it was Laozi who said that ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’. And that’s how it is. You just take one step after another, but you have a vector and a target in mind.”
Holding the hopes of millions in your hands must be incredibly daunting and distracting. The media has followed the work of Prof Wischik and his team of researchers through every stage. And, likewise, the public have waited with baited breath for him, and other Alzheimer’s researchers around the world, to make the all important announcements that they have been waiting for.
Scepticism has been a factor too. His research initially drew a less-than-lukewarm response from the medical community, as it flew in the face of what was the most popular theory of what caused the disease – namely that a different protein, beta amyloid forms sticky plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer’s sufferers.
But many drugs designed to attack beta amyloid have failed, whereas Prof Wischik’s theory and experimental drug have shown extremely promising results.
So, at first, the question was ‘Does LMTX work?’ But with the drug already having reached the fourth and final stage of trials, this time being carried out among 1,700 people, within 250 centres across 22 countries, it now seems to be a matter of “When can we start taking it?”
As Prof Wischik explained, it takes decades, sometimes numerous lifetimes, to develop a drug like this. But he and his team have learned to forge on, undeterred by the eyes and ears which have been on them all these years.
“Yes, there have been times when I’ve felt like a lot hangs on us, but I don’t think of it that way,” he explained in an even tone.
“I just think in terms of ‘one foot in front of the other’. Part of me understands the scale of it, but there’s another part that’s solving each little problem, day after day.”
The scale he mentions is not small. In fact, it’s huge, and a lot bigger than we think.
Prof Wischik explained that in the UK alone there are 6.7 million people who are at stage one of the disease; three million at stage two; 2.9million at stage three; and 1.7million at stages four, five and six.
The trouble is, only a small percentage of what is now understood to be the six stages of Alzheimer’s is recorded by the medical profession.
“But the figure for Alzheimer’s disease is only about one million,” he concluded, “so they are only counting a bit of stages four to six, but the rest is hidden. And it’s hidden because the early stages are where people are quietly progressing. It’s what people call ‘being a bit dottled’ initially. But it’s progressive.”
Despite what many think, the number of people affected by Alzheimer’s isn’t going up, Prof Wischik explained. But the fact we’re living longer than ever means it’s more prevalent.
In a short time, the health service could be stretched to crisis point trying to treat those with the disease. As such, concerns are growing exponentially among the medical community, but also among the general population.
“It’s one of the most feared diseases,” he said. “Particularly for people as they get into their 60s and beyond. That’s the time when they are looking forward to an enjoyable life in retirement. But this is a disease which robs you of the capacity to enjoy pretty much everything. You get reduced to somebody for whom all that stuff that one has laboured for, career-wise and family-wise, ceases to have any meaning.”
But hope is around the corner, thanks to the imminent release of LMTX. This might seem premature, given that the final stage of trials has yet to be passed. Indeed, the first read outs of data collected from the 250 centres across the globe – including the one in Aberdeen’s Foresterhill which starts trials before Christmas this year – are expected in late 2015.
But as we spoke, Prof Wischik radiated a cast iron positivity about the direction that his drug is going.
STOPPING IT IN ITS TRACKS
Perhaps it has something to do with results like those from the Phase Two double blind trial which showed that LMTX was able to reduce the rate of progression of Alzheimer’s disease in mild to moderate-level patients by about 85%, all but stopping it in its tracks.
So you would forgive Prof Wischik a little smugness. After all, he now heads up a multi-million pound company which is producing a truly revolutionary drug that has already reaped results which others in his profession could only dream of.
But it’s just not his style to gloat.
“I kind of never thought I would be the CEO of a company like this,” he said. “I have just done what was needed at each stage, and have adapted myself. But I still am a university professor, firstly at Cambridge, then at Aberdeen. I’ve just carried on doing the same thing since my PhD project”.
Instead, he lays huge gratitude at the feet of those who have helped him progress his work, from his team who followed him from Cambridge to the north-east, to the University of Aberdeen itself which has provided “a very firm basis for the work that we needed to do”.
He also credits his three sons, each of whom have contributed to his work by lending their respective expertise in law, mathematics and product management. And then of course there is his wife, who “holds it all together somehow”.
With the drug almost ready to be released on the market, is retirement on the horizon for Prof Wischik?
“I don’t know,” he said, slightly exasperated. “It’s too far for me to think. My big objective at the moment is just to bring this to market, and I don’t think beyond that.
“It’s just a huge thing that changes the lives of so many people and it’s transformative for me personally too.
“But I can’t think beyond that.
“It’s like it’s in another room or space somewhere that I don’t understand.
“But to get to that point is what I do really understand, and that’s all I think about.”
In fact, as soon as LMTX is on the market, he plans to go back to the laboratory to concentrate on discovering follow-on molecules, and follow-on diagnostics.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he said with a fervency I could imagine has propelled him through each day of his career.
“This drug is a good drug, but I think we can do better than it.”