Opinion: After amyloid failures, it’s time to take a new tack for treating Alzheimer’s

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results, then the last decade or so of Alzheimer’s disease drug development has been insane. Three carefully designed, well-executed, and fully resourced trials targeting amyloid protein in the brain as the cause of Alzheimer’s disease have failed. It’s long past time to take a new approach to this mind-robbing disease.

In 1906, psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer of a 50-year-old woman he had followed for five years, from her admission to a psychiatric hospital for paranoia, progressive sleep and memory disturbance, aggression, and confusion until her death. His autopsy of her brain revealed unusual plaques of amyloid and tangles of neurofibrils. Three years later he described three more cases, including one individual whose brain showed only