CTAD Lessons for 2020: More Phase 2 Trials, More Diversity

What lies ahead for Alzheimer's therapy development? While anti-amyloid antibodies are at last signaling some success, researchers agree that these expensive--and, thus far, at best modestly effective--biologic drugs can form only part of the arsenal needed to fight the disease. Researchers at the 12th Clinical Trials on Alzheimer's Disease conference, held December 4–7 in San Diego, California, broadly agreed that an array of therapeutic approaches will be needed to target symptomatic stages, or to combine with antibodies to boost efficacy. Speakers also discussed how to improve the dismal success rate of Alzheimer's clinical trials. In particular, there is a push to spend more time in Phase 2 to find the right dose and confirm physiological effects of the drug at hand.