Dr. Jeffrey Cummings (Brain Health) recently published an article, “The Role of Clinical Trials in Preclinical Alzheimer’s Disease Drug Development Programs," in the Journal of Prevention of Alzheimer’s Disease. The somewhat provocative findings note that despite the trend toward prevention trials becoming more likely (in part because trials in later stages of the disease have failed) they lack many of the essential aspects of successful clinical trials including a well defined target, enough decline in a placebo group, biomarkers to predict a clinical effect, and an interested market if the therapeutic agent works. Cummings concludes, "trials in patients with symptoms have a better chance of success in drug development trials than prevention trials."
