Beta-site APP-cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1) inhibitors have a long history of failure in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Clinical development of verubecestat, elenbecestat, lanabecestat, umibecestat, atabecestat and LY-3202626 were all discontinued. The drugs largely showed that inhibiting BACE1 reduced amyloid beta (AB) in both cerebrospinal fluid and plasma, reduced AB plaques on PET scans and reduced phosphorylated tau. Unfortunately, patients had early cognitive worsening, and there were signs of lowering of brain volume and increases in psychiatric adverse events.

Researchers have discovered how the tau protein turns from a normal to a disease state in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and have shown how the discovery could potentially deliver a therapeutic target.

Investigators at the Weizmann Institute of Science have identified changes in oligodendrocytes that were shared across multiple dementia types. The team reported its results in the June 27, 2022, online issue of Nature Neuroscience.

Connections, Susan Greenfield told her audience at the 2022 Annual Conference of the European Academy of Neurology, are what the mind is all about. "When you are born, you are born with a fair amount of neurons," she said at the conference's opening plenary on Sunday. But "what characterizes the growth of the brain postnatally is the configurations of connections."

Alzheimer’s experts have suggested that future research may involve combination therapies after yet another trial failure involving a drug targeting amyloid – in this case Roche Holding AG’s crenezumab. Originally discovered by Swiss biotech AC Immune SA, of Lausanne, crenezumab failed to slow or prevent cognitive decline in people with a certain mutation that causes early onset in a closely watched trial.

Retispec Inc. and the Toronto Memory Program launched a community screening program for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) funded by the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC). The program will provide two points of entry for screening—optometry clinics and the Alzheimer Society of Toronto. The project is one of 12 early detection efforts worldwide that received a total of $4.5 million in funding this week from DAC.

Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and Ai-Brainscience Inc. signed an exclusive sales agreement for Japan that will see Otsuka market Ai-Brainscience’s eye-tracking application to test for cognitive function. The eye-tracking app, AiBS-01, could become the first dementia diagnosis application to receive regulatory approval in Japan. Ibaraki, Japan-based Ai-Brainscience (AiBS) is developing devices that use the eye-tracking based cognitive assessment test to detect early dementia beyond the conventional assessment methods performed by specialists.

Mark it as a day to remember. The U.S. FDA has awarded de novo marketing authorization for the first in vitro diagnostic (IVD) test for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), enabling diagnosis of the dreaded disease years earlier than current clinical tests. Fujirebio Diagnostics Inc.’s Lumipulse G β-Amyloid Ratio (1-42/1-40) measures specific proteins in cerebral spinal fluid to provide rapid assessment of the risk of amyloid plaques, an indicator of the disease that may develop decades before cognitive impairment occurs.