CervoMed Inc. reported that plasma neurofilament light, a blood marker of nerve-fiber damage, fell by an average of about 3.1 picograms per milliliter over the first 12 weeks of an open-label Phase 2a trial of neflamapimod in people with nonfluent variant primary progressive aphasia (nfvPPA), a rare form of frontotemporal dementia for which no treatment is approved in the United States or European Union. The company presented the finding in a late-breaking oral session on October 11, 2026, at the International Society of Frontotemporal Dementias annual meeting in Philadelphia.
The trial, registered as NCT07033481 and run at academic medical centers in the United States and the United Kingdom, enrolled 25 participants with nfvPPA, a condition in which people gradually lose the ability to produce fluent speech while their understanding of word meaning is largely preserved. The disease is most often linked at autopsy to abnormal tau protein in the brain, and neflamapimod is an oral small molecule designed to block p38 alpha, an enzyme that in laboratory and animal research has been tied to tau-related toxicity to neurons and synapses. At baseline, 18 of the 25 participants, 72 percent, had neurofilament light levels above what is typical for the general population.
CervoMed said the decline in the marker was concentrated in participants who started with higher levels: in an exploratory subgroup of 13 people whose baseline readings were at or above the group median, the average 12-week decline was about 5.7 picograms per milliliter. A second blood marker tracked in the same participants, glial fibrillary acidic protein, which is associated with brain inflammation, remained broadly stable over the same period. The company reported that neflamapimod was generally well tolerated, with one participant discontinuing treatment after developing elevated liver enzymes that resolved once dosing stopped.