17 Dec 2010

Who says Alzheimer's drug development is all Aβ all the time? Not so. The Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation funds a broad array of approaches, and a report authored by the foundation's science intern Bobby Lee lays them out in topically organized, yet short, digestible morsels. The open-access journal Alzheimer's Research and Therapy just published the report, so you can freely download it. Check out what else there is in active drug discovery, and place your bets on what's going to work out in the clinic. More seriously, a brief survey of this report serves to reinforce a growing notion amid clinical researchers in this field: Success in AD therapy may require a combination of drugs that hit different aspects of the disease's pathogenesis. In the spirit of making this possible, the FDA earlier this week released a draft guidance on co-development of two or more non-approved investigational compounds. Researchers, put your thinking caps on and give feedback to the FDA on combination therapy testing so that the successful programs from among ADDF's and other efforts can be tested in new ways.—Gabrielle Strobel.