Biogen’s Results Leave the Alzheimer’s Puzzle Unsolved
This isn’t the home run some investors were looking for.
Good, but not good enough.
Photographer: Scott Eisen/Bloomberg
It’s hard not to cheer when a drug is shown to have a very real potential to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease — a common, devastating, and currently uncurable condition. But some restraint is needed when reacting to the results released late Wednesday for the treatment being developed by Biogen Inc. and Eisai Co.
The drug, BAN2401, was shown to significantly slow cognitive decline after 18 months of treatment at a high dose — depending on how you measure it. Regardless of the qualifier, this is absolutely a promising outcome and the data is better than I, a skeptic on Alzheimer’s studies, expected in some respects. But there’s much more testing to be done before anyone can be sure about this result, and it will take a long time.