New trials for British OA treatment

New trials for British OA treatment
An Alaskan Malamute enjoys some water therapy. Many dogs around the world suffer significantly from issues with arthritis.

A British pharmaceutical company is to move to next-stage clinical trials of a new drug for the treatment of canine osteoarthritis (OA) after signing a funding deal with one of the world’s top five animal health companies.

AKL Research and Development, which is based in Stevenage, and its as-yet unnamed partner will undertake a study in dogs with naturally occurring OA.

The new drug, APPA, is an oral, patented, fixed-dose combination of two synthetic secondary metabolites of plant origin, apocynin and paenol.

During the randomised test, researchers will compare the efficacy and the duration of efficacy of APPA with currently used non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs.

David |Miles, CEO of AKL, recently acknowledged the suffering of millions of dogs because of OA, pointing out that current treatments weren’t as effective as they needed to be:

‘We already know from previous canine studies that APPA reduced pain and has an excellent tolerability profile, but this exciting new partnership will allow us to go one stage further and assess sustainability of response,’ he added.