American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly announced last week that it had seen encouraging clinical trial results of its new Alzheimer’s medication. According to the company, their experimental drug, donanemab, was shown in a late-stage trial to slow cognitive decline by 35%. While these results do sound promising, the full data is not yet released, so there’s still a lot we don’t know.
Donanemab works by targeting a common hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease in the brain: amyloid plaques.
Beta-amyloid is a protein which plays an important role in brain function for everyone. But in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, beta-amyloid turns toxic – clumping together and disrupting the connection between brain cells and their function. This leads to cognitive issues such as memory loss.
