Alzheimer’s Vaccine Trial Completed by Swedish Scientists

There is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, and the medicines in use can only mitigate the symptoms. In the hunt for a cure, scientists are following several avenues of attack, of which vaccination is currently the most widely explored.  Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) scientists report for the first time the positive effects of an active vaccine against Alzheimer’s disease. Bengt Winblad and colleagues developed a new vaccine, named CAD106, that involves active immunization in a process designed to trigger the body’s immune defense against beta-amyloid.  In this second clinical trial on humans, the vaccine was modified to affect only the harmful beta-amyloid. The researchers found that 80% of the patients involved in the trials developed their own protective antibodies against beta-amyloid without suffering any side effects over the three years of the study. The researchers believe that this suggests that the CAD106 vaccine is a tolerable treatment for patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s. Larger trials must now be conducted to confirm the CAD106 vaccine’s efficacy.