--- title: Alzheimer's Treatment: Promising New Drug description: An antibody is getting Alzheimer’s experts excited about the possibility of a powerful treatment that may take care of the condition’s most challenging disease-causing feature canonical: https://time.com/4473174/most-promising-results-yet-for-alzheimers-treatment/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-08-31T17:09:30.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:55:13.057Z article:section: Health og:title: Most Promising Results Yet for Alzheimer's Treatment og:description: An antibody is getting Alzheimer’s experts excited about the possibility of a powerful treatment that may take care of the condition’s most challenging disease-causing feature og:url: https://time.com/4473174/most-promising-results-yet-for-alzheimers-treatment/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4eb9e8e4e1c0d452/6988604c8e06017e23461fdb/brain-health-illo.jpg?branch=production&width=1000&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1000 og:image:height: 563 og:image:alt: TIME.com stock health brain og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Most Promising Results Yet for Alzheimer's Treatment twitter:description: An antibody is getting Alzheimer’s experts excited about the possibility of a powerful treatment that may take care of the condition’s most challenging disease-causing feature twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4eb9e8e4e1c0d452/6988604c8e06017e23461fdb/brain-health-illo.jpg?branch=production&width=1000&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # An Alzheimer’s Drug Shows Serious Promise > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ## Video: Alzheimer's Researcher Rudolph Tanzi on Why he's Optimistic [Watch (HLS stream): Alzheimer's Researcher Rudolph Tanzi on Why he's Optimistic](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/Ebl6dMCj.m3u8) (3:53)  _Published 2015-08-26. Tanzi is a pioneer in the field of Alzheimer's research, and has spent most of his career studying a disease that plagues 5.3 million Americans every year._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 31, 2016 5:09 PM UTC  Illustration by Sydney Rae Hass for TIME  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 31, 2016 5:09 PM UTC Treating [Alzheimer](http://time.com/4217067/alzheimers-from-a-new-angle/)’s likely won’t ever be an easy or simple thing. Researchers think that managing the disease will require a combination of treatments, possibly tailored to each person. But in a paper published Wednesday in the journal _Nature_, scientists from a biotech company report the most encouraging results so far for one drug that could play a key role. Researchers at Biogen say that the antibody they have been testing can bind to and break down the [amyloid protein](http://time.com/4109872/new-hope-for-the-treatment-and-prevention-of-alzheimers/) that builds up in abnormal amounts in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. Even more encouraging, they report that for a small number of people in the study, that reduction in amyloid plaques was linked to a slowing in the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s. “We are pretty certain of the fact that the antibody reduces the amyloid plaques and in some ways gets rid of the majority of it,” says Alfred Sandrock, senior author of the paper from Massachusetts-based Biogen. “That’s important because if we really want to treat Alzheimer’s at even the very earliest stages, then we felt it was important for our antibody to remove the plaque that’s already there.” The results of the trial, which Biogen has revealed in pieces at previous scientific conferences, shows that the higher the dose of the antibody, called aducanumab, the more amyloid is removed. In the trial of 165 people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s, participants were randomly assigned to receive either placebo or one of three different doses of the drug. After a year of monthly infusions, those receiving the highest doses showed the most reduction in amyloid compared to the start of the study. The small number of people who were tested on cognitive function showed promising signs that reducing the amount of amyloid in the brain might translate into improved function, but that’s just an early hint. The company is recruiting people for two other ongoing trials that aim to answer that question. So far, though, the drug seems to slow the cognitive decline; whether this decline can return brains to their pre-amyloid, pre-Alzheimer’s function won’t be known until the additional studies are completed. What happens when amyloid builds up in the brain is a complex process that involves damage, some of it permanent, to nerves and neural networks. But animal work showed that some nerves surrounding amyloid plaques were restored to close to their original function, providing hope that it might be possible to recover at least some cognitive function if amyloid plaques are removed. It’s not clear yet exactly how the antibody is melting away the plaque, but studies in animals may provide a clue. In earlier trials, researchers think the aducanumab is breaking down the amyloid and attracting the body’s immune system to dispatch the remnants — specifically a class of cells known as microglia, which can digest biological residue. Aducanumab is one of several anti-amyloid strategies that companies are pursuing to treat Alzheimer’s. Biogen believes its compound has an advantage in that it doesn’t bind to amyloid that most people have circulating in the blood; instead it preferentially targets the amyloid that is aggregated in plaques in the brain, which Alzheimer’s experts believe is the most toxic form of the protein and responsible for the disease’s symptoms of memory problems and cognitive decline. The drug is not without side effects. The people getting the highest dose showed higher rates of a brain swelling that’s been linked with aducanumab and other drugs in earlier trials. About 41% of those receiving the drug at any dose showed this side effect. Stephen Salloway, professor of neurology and psychiatry at Brown University and one of the co-authors of the paper, says that swelling could be monitored with more frequent brain scans. The researches also learned that people with a genetic predisposition to developing Alzheimer’s are also at higher risk of developing the side effect. Salloway says that more studies will be needed to understand what is causing the swelling, but it’s possible that the dramatic change in amyloid could be the major factor. Most of the swelling occurs soon after people start taking the drug, and it subsides if they stop the treatment. “At this point, I would not be so concerned that I would advise people not to participate in the trials of the drug,” says James Hendrix, director of global science initiatives at the Alzheimer’s Association. “It’s something the company is keenly aware of, that the Food and Drug Administration is keenly aware of, and the we just need to see if we can manage the risk. I’m very excited by these results.” If the additional studies confirm these early results, it’s possible that aducanumab could be used as a [preventive therapy](http://time.com/3590494/alzheimers-blood-test/) doctors prescribe to people who might be at higher risk of developing Alzheimer’s. Routine screening for amyloid could also become more common if treatments like these become available, so that doctors can find those who might benefit most from these medications and stop the disease before it really takes hold. ## Transcript When you realize you've found a new gene, or you've found a defect in a gene you've been searching for, there's this moment in time where there's this incredible amount of satisfaction. And then you go to bed, and you know that at least for that evening, you're the only person in the universe to have discovered this amazing thing. They might have the chance to help billions of people now and long after you're gone. So it's really, it's hard to describe a feeling like it. We were the first ones to find the disease gene using genetics, back in the early 80's. Our lab equipment catalog was basically Kmart. Because nobody sold anything yet we had to build it all. For my student thesis, I decided I wanted to build the first end to end map of a chromosome. It was the first time that was gonna be possible. And I'd been working on that gene and other genes like it ever since trying to come up with novel therapies for the disease. I have Alzheimer's disease. Early onset. I got to talk a little bit to Julianne Moore, who was a Time 100 honoree at the gala. And I told her, I said, the mutation you had in the movie, I discovered. That was the gene mutation you had in the movie was actually discovered by our lab. [ MUSIC ] Between 1906 and 1986, We had no idea what caused the pathology. So people would look in the brains of patients after they died; See the plaques, the tangles, the evidence, the information and then have to guess what happened to this brain. And it was the equivalent really of aliens coming down from space and they want to understand the game of football and say" Well, wow what happened here "? They see some grass dug up and... Crumbled up sheet of paper where they get a little bit more evidence of what happened. There's no footballs in sight. There are no players in sight. For decades, that was the equivalent of how we were trying to figure out Alzheimer's. Then in the late 80s when we and others found the first Alzheimer's genes, now we had the real physical targets. We said, this is what's going on. Here's the gene that makes the amyloid. Here are the mutations that make everything go wrong. And so now for the first time, we had hard evidence from genes and proteins that said exactly what was happening before the pathology. [ MUSIC ] Alzheimer's disease affects 50 % of people over 85. Life span right now is 80. If we don't throw more money into this disease, There's a 50 % chance you're gonna get this disease in your lifetime cuz you're probably gonna reach 85. We know so much about this disease. We now know of 2 or 3 dozen different genes beyond the first 4 we found in the 80s and 90s that cause this disease or are predisposed to it. But the funding is what limits how much we can do. We have enough funding to do about five percent of our to- do list of equally important tasks. You look at cancer, AIDs, heart disease. They get twelve billion, ten billion, eight billion. six billion dollars from the government and you see in the incidents of these diseases all go down as a result. Alzheimer's last year got a half a billion Yeah. I always teach my students and trainees, think about what science is going like 50 or 100 years from now and make it your goal to come up with something that lasts 50 years and doesn't go away. Your role as a scientist when you go into the lab is not to prove it but to disprove it. If you go in the lab, And try to crush your hypothesis, kill it, and then see what little thread survives. And then use that to come up with the next idea. Over your lifetime, you're gonna build a little tapestry. If it hangs on in 50 years from now, it's still part of the [ UNKNOWN ] tapestry, you've done more than most. 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