Clinical Trials 101

I have spent my entire career interested in the mysteries of the brain: what it looks like, how it works and what happens when it doesn’t. Alzheimer’s disease has been the primary focus of my professional life, starting as a young researcher looking at brain scans, and leading up to now, as the head of the research program at the Alzheimer’s Association.

I wasn’t yet fully awake this morning when I started poking through my Facebook feed and saw the head-spinning news that Biogen had reversed itself and was now asking the FDA to approve its experimental Alzheimer’s drug.

After some costly and disappointing drug trial failures, the field welcomes a funding surge, tools for tracking disease, and interdisciplinary collaborations to tackle one of science’s most stubborn puzzles.

In a decision likely to stir scientific debate across the world, China's health regulator conditionally approved a new Alzheimer's drug for patients with mild-to-moderate forms of the neurodegenerative disease. 

Researchers have found a woman with a rare genetic mutation that has protected her from dementia even though her brain has developed major neurological features of the disease.