Vaccines for Alzheimer’s: exploiting similarities with Down syndrome

One approach to overcome continuing challenges facing drug research and development for Alzheimer’s is a vaccine. Swiss AC Immune has developed an Abeta-focused vaccine called ACI-24, which shown to be both effective and safe in pre-clinical models. As well as studying ACI-24 in Alzheimer’s patients, the company is investigating the candidate in Down syndrome patients who have a genetic predisposition to developing Alzheimer’s and are a more homogenous patient group. Believed to be caused by the build-up of plaques in the brain consisting of fibrillary amyloid beta (ABeta) peptides and neurofibrillary tangles of tau proteins, Alzheimer’s disease affects approximately 50 million people globally and is the leading cause of dementia. Despite its prevalence, academic researchers and the pharmaceutical industry have struggled to develop effective therapies against Alzheimer’s disease, with many drugs failing in late stage clinical trials. Research carried out between 2002 and 2012 concluded that the condition has a 99.6% trial failure rate.