About that Alzheimer's failure

Last week’s disappointing news about the failure of the biggest hope for Alzheimer’s disease wasn’t a West Coast story. It was companies from Boston (Biogen) and Japan (Eisai), after all, that halted two late-stage clinical trials of an experimental treatment predicated on the increasingly controversial hypothesis that amyloid plaques are key to taming the disease.

But as my STAT colleagues and I pulled together an analysis of what’s next in the Alzheimer’s drug pipeline, I found myself struck by just how many Bay Area companies were at the top of our list: There’s Denali Therapeutics, which is targeting brain inflammation. There’s young blood miner Alkahest. And there’s Alector, which is targeting genetic mutations with ties to neurodegeneration.

The West Coast is also home to plenty of intriguing early-stage research probing non-amyloid approaches to treating Alzheimer's. One researcher worth watching is Dr. Dale Bredesen of the Bay Area-based Buck Institute for Research on Aging. Bredesen has long been exploring interventions related to leaky gut, microbes, and toxic metals that could gain new attention among researchers desperate for fresh ideas.