Monoclonal Antibodies for Alzheimer Disease and Lecanemab’s Potential: Richard Isaacson, MD

WATCH TIME: 7 minutes

“I do think that there is not a one-size-fits-all [approach] and I think that different people with different genes do need to be treated differently with the current FDA-approved drug, aducanumab, that’s on the market. There is a label way and then there's the clinical practice way, and people with 1 or more copies of the APOE4…[with] those people, you need to be really careful about the risk of ARIA.”

Richard Isaacson, MD, director of the Center for Brain Health and Alzheimer Prevention Clinic at Florida Atlantic University medicine, served as a dementia cochair at the 2022 International Congress on the Future of Neurology (IFN) annual meeting, held September 23-24, in Manhattan, New York. During the conference, he participated in a Medical Crossfire session with Marwan N. Sabbagh, MD, FAAN, professor of neurology at the Barrow Neurological Institute, on the topic of “Monoclonal Antibodies in AD: To Use or Not to Use.” It was one of the sessions that stood out the most to him as these therapies have become a huge topic of conversation in the field over the past 5 years, with several agents making their way to FDA review.

Isaacson noted the timing of the session, with the results of the phase 3 Clarity AD trial (NCT03887455) of lecanemab presented the following week. He spoke to those data and the history of trial and error with monoclonal antibodies, as wellas the changes in approach in these trials.

In a recent conversation with NeurologyLive^®, Isaacson discussed his experience participating in the medical crossfire at the 2022 IFN annual meeting and what his takeaways were. Isaacson explained his belief that there is not a “one-size-fits-all” treatment and that people with different genes do need to be treated differently, noting that there needs to be a better understanding of the treatments and their true efficacy in terms of how it differs for individual patients.