Rational Behavior

• Aging
• Alzheimer's
• beta amyloid
• biotech
• Curing Alzheimer's
• Dementia
• solanezumab
• tau protein
• Telocyte

We waste stunning amounts of money and effort on comprehensively ineffective trials.

As a recent article points out, in the past 15 years, there have been 123 Alzheimer drug failures and, while four medicines have been approved, none of them affect the progress of the disease. Symptomatic therapy at best, we have no medications – none – that have any effect on the disease or on its mortality. A quick look at clinicaltrials.gov lists almost 1,500 interventional trials aimed at treating Alzheimer’s disease, yet once again there is no evidence that any of these trials has resulted (or will result) in an intervention that changes the outcome of Alzheimer’s disease.

Federal funding for Alzheimer’s is estimated at almost half a billion dollars and some have estimated that Eli Lilly’s potential treatment for Alzheimer’s, solanezumab, may end up costing the company one billion dollars to achieve approval of that drug alone, even though there is no evidence that it actually prevents or cures the disease. The most optimistic interpretation of the statistical data of thousands of patients over many years, would be stretching it to suggest it might possibly delay cognitive decline and death by 2-3 months over an eight year period from diagnosis to death. Even that wishful thought is doubtful and scarcely any consolation to those enduring an extra handful of weeks in a skilled care nursing home (or having to pay for it).

No matter what the current target of choice – beta amyloid, tau proteins, inflammation, or any other target-du-jour – none of these targets have ever been shown to offer a glimmer of hope. Despite the history of repeated and consistent failure, we continue to spend (and vote to spend) money on these same drug targets. We eagerly bash our empty heads against the same solid brick wall, naively hoping that one day we fill find that the wall will be made of air (like the air in our brains, which leads to our irrational behavior). The apocryphal observation pertains: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. We waste money and effort on ineffective and expensive trials aimed at targets that we know are futile.

The irony – and the tragedy – is that we can both prevent and cure Alzheimer’s disease, both effectively and inexpensively if we understand the actual pathology and target the underlying causes. We could do, effectively and inexpensively, what big pharma has failed to do ineffectively and expensively. What big pharma can’t do for one billion dollars, Telocyte can do for 0.5% of that figure, simply by aiming at the right target.

We need rationality, insight, and just enough funding to prove it can be done.