ANDLilly’s experimental Alzheimer’s drug, donanemab, showed some of the best initial results seen by pharmaceutical researchers in the field. What divides many researchers is whether this is a cause for excitement or not.
The results, released on Saturday at the International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Diseases and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, are from a Phase 2 study, generally used by pharmaceutical companies to test whether a drug deserves to be tested in a larger study. Phase 3 that can result in approval. Although the first-line results were described earlier in a press release from Lilly, they represent a major watermark for Alzheimer’s studies. This is the first time that a Phase 2 study of a drug that tries to slow Alzheimer’s, not just relieve patients’ symptoms, has had a positive result.
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