The New Alzheimer ' s Therapies are Not What One Would Call Successful

The first batch of immunotherapies demonstrated to be capable of clearing extracellular amyloid-β from the brain have performed poorly in late stage Alzheimer's patients. Data is beginning to emerge for their ability to modestly slow down the progression of the condition at earlier stages, however. This somewhat fits with the amyloid cascade hypothesis, in that it is evidence to support the idea that amyloid-β is no longer important to disease progression once the condition has reached the stage of becoming a feedback loop involving tau aggregation, chronic inflammation, and cell death. Unfortunately, it isn't strong evidence for amyloid-β aggregation to be the major player in early Alzheimer's, building the foundation for that late stage disease environment to exist. When we say "modestly slow down the progression", it is worth noting that the reported effect size really isn't all that impressive, and it becomes reasonable to ask whether the side-effect profile and cost of the treatment is actually worth it. If amyloid-β were the major mechanism of early phases of Alzheimer's disease, wouldn't we see a much more profound benefit from clearance? Expensive therapies that do little for patients are, unfortunately, business as usual in the fields of neurodegeneration and cancer. Pharma companies have become adept at colluding with regulators to eke out some declaration of marginal success from what is essentially a failed avenue of research and development. Muc...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Medicine, Biotech, Research Source Type: blogs