Dementia Japan 29: 26-34, 2015

Disease-modifying drugs for Alzheimer's disease:current conditions and challenges of their development

Ryoko Ihara¹⁾, Atsushi Iwata²⁾

¹⁾Department of Neurology, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo
²⁾Japan Science and Technology Agency/Department of Neurology, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo

    Against growing world-wide dementia problem, several kinds of disease-modifying drugs for Alzheimer's disease (AD) that target the amyloid cascade have been developed and shown effectiveness in preclinical studies.  However, all the drugs have failed to meet efficacy endpoints in clinical trials.  It is not only because of drug design problems (e.g. wrong target, insufficient dose), but also because of problems of clinical study design (e.g. intended subjects were in a too late disease stage to get a drug effect, non-AD subjects who should be excluded were involved, difficulty in meeting co-primary outcome measures).  Here, we explain problems emerged in past development of disease modifying drugs and new attempts to overcome them.

Address correspondence to Dr. Ryoko Ihara, Department of Neurology, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo(7-3-1 Honko, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan)