Understanding the Complexity and Heterogenicity of Alzheimer Disease: Thomas Wisniewski, MD

From 1995 to 2021, $42.5 billion in cumulative private expenditures funded clinical trials testing agents for Alzheimer disease (AD). At times, the field seemed to be on the brink of a breakthrough, with 57% of those costs coming from phase 3 trials.1 Nonetheless, aside from the 2021 approval of aducanumab (Adehelm; Biogen)­—which was met with controversy across neurology and medicine as a whole—there have only been 5 novel drugs, all for symptomatic treatment, to reach FDA approval in the past quarter century.

Over time, there have been hundreds of papers published seeking to further understand the root causes of the disease and thus produce more diversely targeted therapeutics. The complex nature of the disease, and the various pathogenic pathways it derives from, makes AD one of the most difficult diseases to crack, Thomas M. Wisniewski, MD, said. Wisniewski, director of NYU Langone’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and Center for Cognitive Neurology, believes the community has gained an immense amount of knowledge regarding the disease’s pathology; however, finding effective therapies remains a challenge.

In an interview with NeurologyLive^®, Wisniewski provided context on the advances in the understanding of AD, and the need to learn more about what drives the root its pathology. Additionally, he discussed the way drug development should be approached, the potential for combination approaches, and the difficulties finding drugs to treat the sporadic nature of the disease.