Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder best known for its motor symptoms. However, a proportion of patients also develop dementia as the condition advances. Yet the biological divide between those who experience this cognitive decline and those who do not has remained an open question. Are they different conditions or simply stages of the same disease?
Subtyping is what made precision medicine in cancer a reality. And for successful drug discovery in all its stages, finding subtypes in Alzheimer’s disease is all but imperative.
Subtyping is what made precision medicine in cancer a reality. And for successful drug discovery in all its stages, finding subtypes in Alzheimer’s disease is all but imperative. Prior to the approval of the modestly effective Leqembi
(lecanemab, Biogen Inc./Eisai Co. Ltd.), Kisunla (donanemab, Eli Lilly and Co.), and the since-withdrawn Aduhelm (aducanumab, Biogen Inc./Eisai Co. Ltd.), more than a dozen failed phase III clinical trials were all that amyloid-targeting drugs had to show for themselves for decades of effort.
Subtyping is what made precision medicine in cancer a reality. And for successful drug discovery in all its stages, finding subtypes in Alzheimer’s disease is all but imperative. Prior to the approval of the modestly effective Lequembi (lecanemab, Biogen Inc./Eisai Co. Ltd.) Kisunla (donanemab, Eli Lilly and Co.), and the since-withdrawn Aduhelm (aducanumab, Biogen Inc./Eisai Co. Ltd.), more than a dozen failed phase III clinical trials were all that amyloid-targeting drugs had to show for themselves for decades of effort.
At the 2025 International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases and Related Neurological Disorders (ADPD), Promis Neurosciences Inc. presented its new approach to optimizing the α-synuclein (α-Syn) vaccine composition in order to maximize targeting of toxic α-Syn species.
Positive 16-week extension data from Cervomed Inc.’s phase IIb in dementia with Lewy bodies followed a failure from December. New results from the Rewind-LB trial testing neflamapimod, a brain-penetrant, orally administered small molecule that inhibits the intracellular enzyme p38MAP kinase alpha, have encouraged the company to pursue a phase III study.
Cognition Therapeutics Inc. evolved from the work of a neuroscientist and a chemist working in the San Francisco Bay area, seeking out targets to block the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. Since the company’s 2007 inception, it has received close to $200 million in U.S. NIH grant funding. Investors often tell CEO Lisa Ricciardi, who joined the company in 2020: “’That’s because you have a relationship with the FDA.’ Well, no. It’s because it’s competitive” and the company’s research has met the muster. “You have to apply two or three times. … It’s with rigor that these results are generated and that we’re able to get more funding.”
Investors will get more details during the International Lewy Body Dementia Conference in Amsterdam late next month, but Wall Street is already buzzing about Cognition Therapeutics Inc.’s data from the phase II study with CT-1812 in dementia with Lewy bodies.
Cervomed Inc. executives said they intend to scrutinize low plasma drug concentrations that appeared to spoil results from the phase IIb Rewind-LB trial testing neflamapimod in patients with dementia with Lewy bodies.
NLS Pharmaceutics Ltd. has entered into an exclusive worldwide license agreement with Aexon Labs Inc. granting NLS the opportunity to acquire global development and commercialization rights to Aexon’s next-generation nonsulfonamide dual orexin receptor agonists platform.
