Lutz Frolich, MD, PhD: Collaboration Between Clinicians and Industry

“This is still a very, very important area of research.”

Lutz Frölich, MD, PhD, the head of the Department for Geriatric Psychiatry, Central Institute of Mental Health sat with NeurologyLive at the 2018 Alzheimer Association International Conference in Chicago, Illinois, to discuss the imperativeness of collaboration between stakeholders—clinicians, pharmaceutical companies, researchers—in developing therapies for Alzheimer disease.

Frölich spoke about his longstanding involvement in Alzheimer research, which has spanned more than 3 decades, and how in the coming years, Alzheimer disease will rise to the forefront of treatment as the population ages and the prevalence of the condition increases. He said that as this comes to be, the collaboration between the pharmaceutical industry and the clinical research needs to be stronger than ever.

One of the challenges, the geriatric psychiatrist noted, is that the collaboration between the two sides has shifted recently, with most of the onus being placed on the industry for development due to the monetary obligations that pharmaceutical companies have in order to build these therapies. A poster he and colleagues presented at AAIC included a survey that identified the issues that have formed on the clinical research side of the partnership to inform the attendees.