Alzheimer’s disease progressively causes damage to the brain, while there currently is no cure for it some treatments help to boost chemical messages to slow and ward off some symptoms. Ultimately this disease results in the loss of connections between nerve cells in the brain and the death of the cells along with a loss of brain tissue that is devastating.
In America, some 6 million people are affected by this illness and within the UK over 1 million have dementia. This drug is suggested to have the “potential to be transformative” and offer hope that a new treatment could be in sight for the many who are desperately waiting for a way to slow neurodegeneration and disease progression.
This could be the first breakthrough in almost 20 years, and if everything goes well the treatment could be ready for use as early as March in America which could later be backed by regulators within the UK. The last treatment to be approved for the condition was Memantine back in 2003 according to The New England Journal of Medicine.
This new treatment is said to work by attacking toxic amyloid proteins within the brain, and when taken at high doses it helps to slow mental decline by a quarter over a 12 month period. Those that have lost their battle with the disease and passed on have been found to have amyloid plaques in their brains. Although this drug is not a cure it is a treatment for the illness that works, in simple terms, by artificially creating an antibody that latches onto these toxic amyloid plaques to destroy them.
Based on supportive findings (links listed in materials) BLA submitted a request to the FDA requesting the approval of aducanumab for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. The US FDA granted priority review of the drug, meaning that the agency plans to expedite the review process to determine whether or not the medication will be approved.
