Alzheimer’s disease is known as the “memory-robbing” disease. It affects five million people in the U.S. and millions more around the world. There are few medications that treat Alzheimer’s by slowing the progression of the disease but there is not one medication that can cure it. The release of new medications to fight Alzheimer’s disease seems to be a long process due to the little amount of medications approved. This is due to the multiple steps that researchers and drug companies have to go through in the process to release a medication onto the market. The steps, which are explained in the article, “Drug discovery and development: the Role of basic biological research," written by Mohs and Greig, are explained and give an outline as to what qualifications the drug must have in order to proceed to the next step. Unfortunately, most drugs barely make it through the initial stages due to their properties or potential harm it can pose onto humans. Once a medication does make it to the final stages, drug companies are not as willing to fund the production of the medication, especially Alzheimer’s medication, due to the risk that the drug companies could lose out on a lot of profit due to the medication not working as planned. Currently, many drugs for Alzheimer’s aim to stop the progression of the disease, but most of these types of drugs have failed. The entire process can take a total of 14 years, and most of the time, the success rate of the medications passing and being approved is under 5%.
Recently in March of 2019, the drug company Biogen, terminated two of their late-stage studies for an experimental drug for a new Alzheimer’s disease treatment. This was due to the conclusion that the drug would not help Alzheimer’s patients. The drug which was named Aducanumab, was supposed to be a hope in the process to help those with early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Aducanumb, created in 2017, was designed to target Beta amyloid, which plays a key role in Alzheimer’s. As patients who had early symptoms of Alzheimer’s were enrolled in the late-stage studies, the researchers realized that Aducanumb was not working as planned in patients. Although discouraged, the researchers at Biogen looked at the failure in a good light, noting that the failed clinical trials were a way to help advance future research into new ways that Alzheimer’s could be treated. The researcher’s believe that the trials may indicate that the role of amyloid in Alzheimer’s should be reevaluated, due to its little success. This setback has made drugmakers hesitate in the investment of amyloid hypothesis testing. The hesitation is not uncommon in the drug making industry. Most drug making companies are moving away from the production of Alzheimer’s drugs due to the high failure rate. With more research and new hypotheses for targets in Alzheimer’s disease, drug companies can find substantial data and have higher success rates in new medications.
More research is being done every day and the hope for finding a cure for Alzheimer’s, or even a way to treat the underlying symptoms, has not stopped. With new information, researchers may finally be able to make a medication to fight the disease. We can only hope for the best, but I am positive that there will one day be a cure.
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