On 10 December, ADI welcomed its global community to our inaugural End of Year Forecast: ‘Translating the Alzheimer’s Treatment Revolution into Real World Solutions’. This event sought to highlight this new era of Alzheimer’s treatments and cut through the often confusing and cryptic information that is available to the public.
ADI CEO Paola Barbarino set the stage, welcoming the live audience and the event’s guest speaker and world leading expert in research and practice, Professor Jeff Cummings, to give insights on why the new era of Alzheimer’s treatments will have a global impact.
Paola said:
Governments around the world are still awfully unprepared for any kind of treatment. It is our job to stop this feeling of denial that there is nothing out there for people living with dementia, because things are happening, and we need the public to know so that they will start demanding change.
Paola and Jeff guided the audience through the latest breakthroughs, highlighting graphically the 127 Alzheimer treatments that are currently in clinical trials and what stage they are at in the pipeline.
Professor Jeff Cummings said:
We have gone from symptomatic therapies to therapies that are actually changing the disease itself, and that is a new era. – We are at a moment in history which is changing the science and changing the approach to disease and what we’ve tried to do is to capture the progress in terms of therapeutics on this slide.
© J Cummings; M de la Fleur, PhD, Illustrator. Full publication available at https://doi.org/10.1002/trc2.12465
Watch the recording
If you didn’t get the chance to join us for this groundbreaking event, you can catch up on the conversation on the future of Alzheimer’s treatments.
Our highlights from the event:
- Jeff and Paola shared how we are truly entering a new era of drug treatment development with 127 drugs currently in clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease right now.
- It currently takes around 10 years for a treatment to move from Phase 1 through to Phase 3 clinical trials. Jeff highlighted the necessity to shorten this pathway.
- Many treatments are currently aimed at treating mild or early-stage cases of Alzheimer’s disease, however, every person with early Alzheimer’s disease will progress to a later stage. Improving stigma around Alzheimer’s disease will improve research and drug development.
- During the Q&A, Jeff raised the importance of diversifying populations in clinical trials, stating that diversity in the data is essential to ensuring that everyone benefits from these treatments.
- Blood-based biomarkers will be a crucial development in this new era. Ensuring a timely diagnosis will mean a person can access the treatments when they need them, as current treatments options are only available to those with a formal diagnosis.
- Both Paola and Jeff discussed the cost effectiveness of the range of treatments and biomarkers, indicating how as they become more widely used, in turn, they will become more accessible.
Towards the end of the event, Paola Barbarino and Jeff Cummings highlighted the importance of addressing global prevalence levels of dementia, and implored governments around the world to begin to build preparedness in their health care systems as new treatments and diagnostics become available.
Paola said:
So many governments around the world are not getting ready and are not preparing, and indeed, use their lack of preparedness almost as an excuse to not make these treatments available, but that is inexcusable – it’s extremely important that we continue to demand for change. There are 55 million people living with dementia, and the projections suggest there will be 139 million or more in only a few years’ time.
ADI would like to thank Edelman for hosting this event. We also extend our thanks to the sponsors for this event Acadia, Eisai, Life Molecular Imaging, Lilly and Re:Cognition Health.
Sponsorship was made in support of this event and did not provide influence over the content or the event or selection of speakers.
Are you new to ADI’s content? Did you know that you can sign up to our mailing list to receive monthly updates direct to you inbox, giving you the global perspective on dementia and Alzheimer’s diseases.
