New Ideas on Attacking Alzheimer’s

Over the last decade, medical science has made tremendous strides in conquering disease.  Deaths from stroke, HIV, heart disease, prostate cancer and several other diseases have dropped significantly thanks to investments in research and strides in developing new treatments.

Alzheimer’s Disease, however, has been an illness that has, to date, defeated the best that modern medicine has thrown at it.  From 2000 to 2006, deaths from Alzheimer’s actually increased by over 46 percent, making it the nation’s seventh leading cause of death.

There’s encouraging news, though, in a new approach that many of the nation’s drugmakers are taking toward this challenge.

Johnson & Johnson, AstraZeneca, Sanofi-Aventis, Abbott Laboratories and GlaxoSmithKline are going to take the unusual step of pooling the data from the clinical trials they have performed in their respective efforts to find an effective treatment for Alzheimer’s.  This means information from over 4,000 patients will now be in a single database accessible to all of the participating pharmaceutical companies as well as outside researchers.

The significance?  Such a large database may shed more light on how Alzheimer’s progresses in patients and potentially enable the development of new studies.  As Food and Drug Administration Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein said, this is the “kind of collaboration that does represent a major shift in thinking about how to accelerate drug development.”

Kudos to the involved pharmaceutical companies for taking a creative step that may bring us closer to treatment for a disease that is affecting millions of individuals and families.