The impact of Alzheimer’s disease in Europe

• Alzheimer’s Disease is a complex disease which destroys brain cells, causing memory loss and problems with thinking and behavior severe enough to affect work, lifelong hobbies or social life.
• Today approximately 26 million people sufferer world-wide. 2025 : the percentage of over-65s will raise from 15.4% of the EU population to 22.4% which will correlate with a rise in Alzheimer’s Disease
• There are very few effective treatments currently available: those that are available only treat the symptoms, but not the underlying disease

The Challenges for new drug development in Alzheimer’s Disease

• Alzheimer’s Disease is very complex
• There are no validated models available which allow scientists to mimic the disease in the laboratory
• The lack of ability to model disease means that it is difficult for drug developers to predict the best new medicines
• There are no sensitive measures available that can be used to determine the effect of a new drug in small numbers of patients over a short period of time
• Currently trials in Alzheimer’s disease need to run for 2 years and cost 10’s of millions Euros per study to test new medicines