{"id":148136,"date":"2022-10-13T23:24:12","date_gmt":"2022-10-14T04:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/new-alzheimers-drug-appears-to-actually-work-to-some-degree"},"modified":"2022-10-13T23:24:12","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T04:24:12","slug":"new-alzheimers-drug-appears-to-actually-work-to-some-degree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/new-alzheimers-drug-appears-to-actually-work-to-some-degree","title":{"rendered":"New Alzheimer\u2019s Drug Appears to Actually Work, to Some Degree"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Last year, the pharmaceutical company Biogen released a drug called Aduhelm. It was the first new Alzheimer\u2019s drug approved by the FDA in almost 20 years, but its rollout was mired in controversy<\/a> \u2014 vast swaths of experts decried its approval, claiming there simply wasn\u2019t enough evidence to support its efficacy, while the Journal of American Medicine<\/em> (JAMA<\/em>) rejected Biogen\u2019s key Aduhelm paper<\/a>. Shortly thereafter, Medicare chose to limit coverage<\/a> of the drug.<\/p>\n

All that is to say that given last year\u2019s Aduhelm spectacle, you\u2019d be forgiven for doubting what appears to be a promising development in Biogen\u2019s continued Alzheimer\u2019s drug development. And that\u2019s just what it announced<\/a> with a collaborator, fellow pharmaceutical maker Eisai, on Tuesday. But that being said, initial data suggests that the new drug is actually proving quite successful in late-stage clinical trials \u2014 enough so that Biogen might have a redemption arc, after all.<\/p>\n

That new drug, lecanemab, is an anti-amyloid medication. An amyloid is a type of protein, and a normal one for brains to produce. An overabundance of amyloids, however, is believed to be caused by a disruption in a healthy brain\u2019s built-in protein disposal system, resulting in a plaque; although our understanding is still fuzzy, brains with Alzheimer\u2019s are shown to have abnormal plaque levels, so the idea is that anti-amyloid lecenameb, administered intravenously, could scrub that plaque away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year, the pharmaceutical company Biogen released a drug called Aduhelm. It was the first new Alzheimer\u2019s drug approved by the FDA in almost 20 years, but its rollout was mired in controversy \u2014 vast swaths of experts decried its approval, claiming there simply wasn\u2019t enough evidence to support its efficacy, while the Journal of [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":513,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-148136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/513"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}