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PHARMACEUTICALS
Solanezumab flopped in a large clinical trial, but the drug or others like it could yet succeed.
A drug that was seen as a major test of the leading theory behind Alzheimer's disease has failed in a large trial of people with mild dementia. Critics of the 'amyloid hypothesis', which posits that the disease is triggered by a build-up of amyloid protein in the brain, say the results are evidence of its weakness. But the jury is still out on whether the theory will eventually yield a treatment.
Proponents of the theory note that the failure could have been due to the particular way in which solanezumab, the drug involved in the trial, works, rather than a flaw in the hypothesis. And other trials are still ongoing to test whether solanezumab - or other drugs that target amyloid - could work in people at risk of the disease who have not shown symptoms, or even in people with Alzheimer's.
"I'm extremely disappointed for patients, but this, for me, doesn't change the way I think about the amyloid hypothesis" says Reisa Sperling, a neurologist at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
She is leading one of several trials to test whether drugs...