With so many novel drug candidates for Alzheimer's disease failing in clinical development, researchers in the US have started using artificial intelligence (AI) to screen already-approved therapies for activity against the neurodegenerative disorder. A team based at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School has come up with an AI algorithm – called DRIAD (Drug Repurposing In Alzheimer's Disease) – that it hopes will not only find treatments but also tease out new therapeutic targets. The AI uses machine learning to measure what happens to human brain neural cells when treated with a drug, and could be "a more rapid and less expensive option" than clinical trials of novel therapeutics, according to the researchers. In the journal Nature Communications, Harvard informatics specialist Artem Sokolov and colleagues report that early studies with the platform based on 80 approved drugs suggest Eli Lilly's Olumiant (baricitinib) as a possible candidate for repurposing as an AD therapy. It's not the first time that AI has suggested a new role for Olumiant, which is approved as an arthritis drug.

Could janus kinase (JAK) inhibitors like Eli Lilly's rheumatoid arthritis drug Olumiant be repurposed to treat Alzheimer's disease? Researchers at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital have set out to find the answer to that question with a new clinical trial that was born from artificial intelligence. The researchers used a type of AI called machine learning to identify existing drugs that might be able to prevent neuronal death in Alzheimer's. The screen pulled up a list of 15 FDA-approved drugs as candidates for repurposing in Alzheimer's, and five of them were JAK inhibitors, they reported in the journal Nature Communications. JAK proteins fuel inflammation and have long been suspected to play a role in Alzheimer's.