After decades of research, the development of the first treatments that can delay the onset of Alzheimer’s disease has been met with excitement and an outpouring of hope.
The immunotherapy drugs lecanemab and donanemab, which have both been approved for use in the USA (although not in Australia), can slow the progression of symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease for people in the early stages of the condition.
They also come with possible side effects that need to be carefully monitored by health professionals.
These and other immunotherapy drugs are just one avenue of potential treatment options for dementia that research teams in Australia and around the world are investigating.
Dr Janet van Eersel, who leads one such team at Macquarie University’s Dementia Research Centre, said dementia was such a complex and varied condition that we’re unlikely to find a “silver bullet” treatment that would be effective for everyone.
“What we likely need is a range of treatment options like we have for cancer and other conditions,” Dr van Eersel said.
“One promising potential treatment we are working on is gene therapy,” she said.
“We are aiming to deliver genetic material into brain cells using specially modified safe viruses to cross the blood-brain barrier. This genetic material can hopefully make the brain cell more resilient to the development of dementia.”
Dr van Eersel, who received research funding from the Dementia Australia Research Foundation, said in addition to her project, there were hundreds of gene therapy clinical trials being run globally.
“It’s a very exciting field that has exploded in the past few years, and I think this is a very promising avenue for treating hard-to-tackle diseases such as dementia.”
As well as gene therapy, Dr van Eersel’s team is working to develop drug treatments for dementia.
“There are many questions to answer when you’re looking at drug treatments,” Dr van Eersel said.
“Firstly, what do you want to target? And what combination and doses are most effective? Testing must start with cell models, then in mouse models, before you get anywhere near any human testing. It’s a slow process.”
She added that the advancement in recent years that is speeding this up, however, is the use of artificial intelligence computer modelling.
“What this enables us to do is to narrow down the most promising drugs for further testing. Like any modelling, it can be very useful, but it always needs to be validated in the real world.”
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