When neurologists discovered that the brains of autopsied Alzheimer’s disease victims had loads of amyloid plaques, they wondered whether the accumulated gunk was a cause of the disease or an effect. Same goes for another Alzheimer’s-associated protein called tau, which forms so-called neurofibrillary tangles. One puzzle: some people die with loads of amyloid or tau and never showed symptoms of the disease.
Nonetheless, drug companies have often adopted the guess that the proteins are causes. They have been rushing to develop chemicals that block their formation.
Gina Kolata, in a cogent news analysis in the New York Times, discusses the failure of the latest such attempt–a drug that Eli Lilly had brought all the way to Phase 3 trials before finding that, far from helping, their drug made the disease worse. Kolata writes that more than 100 other amyloid-blocking drugs are in the pipeline. She quotes one drug researcher admitting “our current views may be too simplistic.”
-Boyce Rensberger
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