The State of Alzheimer Disease Clinical Trials and Prevention Efforts: Eric Reiman, MD

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The executive director of Banner Alzheimer’s Institute discussed the current state of AD trials, as well as his perspective on ongoing efforts to establish prevention therapies.

“My passion has been to find and support the approval, affordability, and widespread availability of prevention therapy as soon as possible. I am more optimistic than ever, although [there’s] no guarantee at all, that we may be able to find and support the approval of an effective prevention therapy within the next 5 years.”

New research efforts in Alzheimer disease (AD) are ongoing, with pivotal trials in the works that could potentially have a dramatic effect on the field of study and overall patient care. Erin Reiman, MD, executive director of Banner Alzheimer’s Institute (BAI), sat down with NeurologyLive to discuss new developments in the AD space, including suggestive findings for the targeting of amyloid, tau, APOE4, and the use of anti-inflammatory therapies as well as gene therapies.

Reiman also discussed prevention therapies, as a leader of BAI’s Alzheimer’s Prevention Initiative. Approval of a prevention therapy will be contingent on results of ongoing pivotal trials, Reiman said, and once a safe and effective treatment is identified, experts will be able to characterize biomarker changes and employ them in additional early phase trials.

Reiman’s comments follow the 2021 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) last week, where he and colleagues presented safety data on the efficacy of pimavanserin (Nuplazid; Acadia) in treating dementia-related psychosis. Patients were evaluated with different types of dementia, including AD, Lewy body dementia, and frontotemporal dementia.

For more coverage of AAIC 2021, click here.