What the End of a Promising Alzheimer ’s Drug Trial Means for One Patient in the Study

After he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, Peter Wooding says he and his wife JoAnn decided they wanted to be “part of the solution” in finding the first effective treatment for the neurodegenerative disease. He volunteered to be part of a trial for a promising new drug called aducanumab. While there is still no effective treatment for Alzheimer’s, in early studies aducanumab melted away the amyloid protein plaques that are the hallmark of the brain disorder. And people taking the drug showed improvements in some of their thinking skills. But last week, the drug’s developers, Biogen and Esai, decided to halt two trials involving aducanumab when an analysis showed that in a larger group of people with mild to moderate disease, the drug didn’t seem to be working to improve people’s memory or cognitive impairments. “It’s sort of like having the rug pulled out from under you,” says Wooding of the news. TIME has followed Wooding’s journey as a volunteer in the trial from the day he was accepted into the study. Wooding, a retired industrial and interior designer, is among nearly 3,000 people who participated in the trials and learned to their surprise that the studies had abruptly ended. The failure is the latest in a string of let-downs involving drugs that target amyloid, leading experts to question whether future treatment strategies should focus so heavily on amyloid plaques. Therapies that target ...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Drugs onetime Source Type: news