Matthew Schrag

I have always said that they don't have everything to do with it, and that it's important for people to understand that Alzheimer's is almost certainly a disease of many factors, and it will almost certainly require many different approaches, perhaps in combination, to result in any sort of remedy that arrests or reverses the symptoms of the disease.

Now, what concerns me about the dominance of anti-amyloid antibodies within this field is that, one, they're very expensive.

Two, they are dangerous.

They can cause brain swelling and bleeding that has on occasion resulted in death.

Third, they're not effective in arresting the symptoms of the disease.

And fourth, it's very important to understand that when this idea, with its incredible dominance over decades, soaks up a lot of the mind share and a lot of the ideas behind drug development and a lot of the big money behind Alzheimer's drugs.

In other words, if you look at the range of clinical trials, you'll see that a lot of things are being tried.

But if you look where the big money's being spent, it's predominantly in anti-amyloid remedies that we know from historical experience are not that great.