At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists raced to find treatments for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. When they screened thousands of existing drugs to see if they interfered with the virus, an Ebola drug called remdesivir emerged as one of several antivirals worth further testing.
Clinical trials quickly followed, finding that remdesivir provided modest recovery benefits for high-risk and hospitalized patients, culminating in approval by the end of 2020.
Neuroscientists are borrowing from the same playbook to accelerate the development of new Alzheimer’s treatments. Developing drugs from scratch often takes more than a decade and can cost billions. And in recent years, that’s only yielded two disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s: Leqembi and Kisunla,.
With many experimental dementia drugs failing late in clinical trials, repurposing existing medications approved for other diseases provides another path toward finding new treatments. Because such drugs are already approved for other diseases, they have a well-established safety profile and can move straight to human trials.
In recent years, this strategy has yielded a diverse array of promising hits, from Viagra to rheumatoid arthritis drugs.
Read more HREAt the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, scientists raced to find treatments for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. When they screened thousands of existing drugs to see if they interfered with the virus, an Ebola drug called remdesivir emerged as one of several antivirals worth further testing.
Clinical trials quickly followed, finding that remdesivir provided modest recovery benefits for high-risk and hospitalized patients, culminating in approval by the end of 2020.
Neuroscientists are borrowing from the same playbook to accelerate the development of new Alzheimer’s treatments. Developing drugs from scratch often takes more than a decade and can cost billions. And in recent years, that’s only yielded two disease-modifying therapies for Alzheimer’s: Leqembi and Kisunla,.
With many experimental dementia drugs failing late in clinical trials, repurposing existing medications approved for other diseases provides another path toward finding new treatments. Because such drugs are already approved for other diseases, they have a well-established safety profile and can move straight to human trials.
In recent years, this strategy has yielded a diverse array of promising hits, from Viagra to rheumatoid arthritis drugs.
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