The last time a drug was approved specifically for Alzheimer's was 2003, and since then, the Alzheimer's drug pipeline has spit out a bunch of duds. Many drug candidates have aimed to clear or disarm beta amyloid, under the logic that eliminating amyloid plaques would halt or reverse the process and thus Alzheimer’s itself. ADAD“The Biogen results are the most exciting results we’ve seen in a while,” says Howard Fillit, executive director and chief science officer at the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. And if that is the case, it would mean that attempts to treat Alzheimer’s disease by cleaning up amyloid are futile. The amyloid hypothesis dominated the search for an Alzheimer’s drug for a long time, but a different way of thinking about Alzheimer’s is coming to the forefront, Vradenburg says.

Source: Washington Post April 04, 2020 14:26 UTC