Unknown: There are roughly 6 million people living with
Alzheimer's in the U.S.; a figure that is expected to more 3 00:00:07,297 --> 00:00:00,022 than double by 2050. The memory-robbing disease kills
more than 120,000 Americans a year, making it the sixth
leading cause of death.
Alzheimer's disease is a devastating disease of
progressive dementia, where people can lose various aspects
of their cognitive functioning, their ability to remember key
things and people.
Genius not aware of the fact that she can ask me the same
question 10 times 10 minutes, oh maybe nine and a half.
The US has spent billions on research but still hasn't been
able to develop a drug that targets the cause of the
disease.
We know that it's a costly disease and the burden of that
cost continues to grow exponentially. A drug
for any company that could treat Alzheimer's successfully would
be seen as just a goldmine for Wall Street and the huge gift to
society. Now one
biotech company thinks it's cracked Alzheimer's tricky code
and a drug known as aducanemab now sold as Aduhelm. This
is an approval for Biogen This is a huge stock event to
50% pop on this FDA approval. But Biden's reported only a
fraction of estimated sales, the company's share price has nearly
halved. Major insurers haven't decided whether to cover the
treatment, which Biogen originally priced at roughly
$56,000 per year. But now the company is bringing that down by
about 50% to hopefully boost sales. In all this comes as the
FDA itself phases investigations into its edge home decision,
which went against the advice of its own advisors.
There's been a real mixed reception among doctors because
of the lack of completely convincing data supporting
whether the drug works.
So the question is who will be prescribing this? Who will be
monitoring it? Who will have access to it and who's going to
pay for it?
The US spends roughly $3 billion on Alzheimer's and dementia
research every year. That's up 360%. Over the past five years,
spending on people with Alzheimer's is said to cost
Medicare $599 billion by 2050.
The fact is, is that Alzheimer's is not just a disease of the
individual who has it. It is a burden on also individuals who
are caregivers as well. In 2020, there are over 11 million
Americans who are providing unpaid care for individuals with
Alzheimer's, that unpaid care is costly to them and to their
family.
I'm Eugenia Zukerman, and I have Alzheimers
I'm Dick Novik retired from the broadcasting business to be able
to take care of my wife. Once I heard she was diagnosed with
Alzheimer's. Eugenia was diagnosed three years ago, every
senior walked around the house with the glasses on their
foreheads and wear my glasses. But this got beyond that this
got to you know, it constantly asked me the same question a
certain amount of disorientation.
My daughters were saying to me Mom, something is wrong with
you. You're not sounding okay. We have to take you to the
hospital and get you tested. I said no way. But of course, I
ended up being taken to the hospital and being looked at
very carefully.
One of the biggest shocks to us was if you go to any other
specialist, gastroenterologist and they give you a medicine for
your stomachache. with Alzheimer's, there has been
really no commonly prescribed medication.
Alzheimer's is a notoriously difficult disease to treat.
But there are a couple drugs available there, you know, at
this point many decades old, and they can help with some of the
symptoms associated with Alzheimer's disease, but in
general, they don't work very well.
So there hadn't been a new Alzheimer's drug that proved in
almost two decades when ad you helm came along, and nothing out
there to try to actually affect the underlying drivers of the
disease.
That's where Biogen comes in. In recent years, his portfolio of
other drugs has faced growing generic competition. In 2020,
the company posted $13.4 billion in revenue, and near six and a
half percent drop year over year, researchers designed Agia
home to target one of the diseases defining
characteristics.
What happens with an Alzheimer's disease is that there's a faulty
cleavage of amyloid in a sense that it results in the
production of these insoluble and sticky amyloid beta we call
them and when this forms, what happens is that that accumulate
in the brain and around it, surrounding it are signs of
inflammation, oxidation and brain cell death.
So Lily has a very similar drug to Biogen is called Diana Mab,
which it has been developing and had some really promising
earlier stage results that showed not just that it clears
the amyloid plaques from the brain but also that there is an
effect on cognition.
But the path to an FDA approved Alzheimer's drug has been
riddled with failures. Over 200 potential medicines failed their
trials over the past decade, and in early 2019 Aduhelm almost
became one of them.