Why Lecanemab Sparks Cautious Hope About Alzheimer’s: QuickTake

It was long ago — in 1906 — that German psychiatrist Alois Alzheimer first connected a case of dementia to abnormal deposits in the brain. Modern researchers have largely proceeded on the thesis that treatments for the disease named for him would need to clear away these aberrant clumps, consisting of a protein called amyloid, that clog patients’ brains. After many disappointing performances by amyloid-targeting drugs, including one controversially approved by US regulators in 2021, a treatment called lecanemab became the first to unambiguously slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in a large trial reported in late 2022. The ...