Alzheimer’s breakthrough

For the first time in a major clinical trial, an experimental drug has seemingly slowed the progress of Alzheimer’s disease, reports CNN.com. The drug, BAN2401, is an antibody designed to remove amyloid, a protein that can build up in the brain and disrupt nerve cell function. The 18-month trial by U.S. biotech company Biogen and Japanese drugmaker Eisai involved 856 people with mild cognitive impairment, a sign of early-stage Alzheimer’s, or mild Alzheimer’s dementia; all had a significant buildup of the protein. While other drugs have succeeded in reducing amyloid levels, they didn’t ease memory decline or other cognitive problems. But BAN2401 reduced the development of new amyloid clusters in the brain and shrunk existing plaques by 70 percent on average. On a series of cognitive tests measuring memory and skills such as planning and reasoning, the performance of participants who took the experimental treatment declined at a rate up to