Marisa Wexler, MS,  senior science writer—

The National Institute on Aging (NIA) has awarded a five-year grant worth up to $5 million to support a clinical trial that will test AAV2-BDNF, an investigational gene therapy, in people with Alzheimer’s disease or mild cognitive impairment, which often precedes dementia. The therapy aims to deliver the gene BDNF to…

For the first time in almost 18 years, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new treatment — Aduhelm, also known as aducanumab — for Alzheimer’s disease, and a first targeted treatment for patients. With this approval, Aduhelm becomes the first disease-modifying therapy for Alzheimer’s, and…

In a few days, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is expected to announce whether or not it decided that aducanumab, an investigational treatment for Alzheimer’s disease developed by Biogen, merits approval and wide…

A draft report from the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, known as ICER, found that there is insufficient evidence to determine whether the investigational therapy aducanumab will provide health benefits to people with Alzheimer’s disease. ICER is an independent non-profit research institute that works to assess the…

LX1001, a gene therapy for Alzheimer’s disease being developed by Lexeo Therapeutics, has been granted fast track designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The therapy is designed to deliver a version of the APOE gene, called APOE2, to cells in the central nervous system (the…

A new Phase 3 clinical trial, called EMBARK, will evaluate the long-term safety and efficacy of aducanumab (BIIB037), an investigational therapy for Alzheimer’s disease in patients who took part in its previous clinical studies. The trial’s design was described by Carmen Castrillo-Viguera, a medical director at Biogen, in the poster “…

Despite minor improvements in recent years, the availability of care for people with dementia in Europe is largely inadequate, according to a new report. The report, “Dementia Monitor 2020,” was published by Alzheimer Europe, an organization that campaigns to ensure that Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are treated…

People with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer’s disease  treated for three weeks with sargramostim, a medication that activates the immune system, showed improvements in cognition in a small clinical trial. These results support further investigation of sargramostim — and, more generally, the strategy of targeted immune activation — in treating Alzheimer’s, its…

Cassava Sciences plans to launch two Phase 3 clinical trials evaluating the efficacy of simufilam, its investigational oral treatment for Alzheimer’s disease, in the second half of this year, the company announced. If successful, results of these studies in patients with mild-to-moderate disease will…

Simufilam, an investigational oral medication being developed by Cassava Sciences, improved cognition and behavior in people with Alzheimer’s disease after six months of dosing in a clinical trial, interim data show. “Today’s data once again suggests simufilam could be a transformative, novel therapeutic,” Nadav Friedmann, MD, PhD, chief medical…