91AV

Alzheimer's Disease Therapeutics - are we making progress towards a disease modifying treatment for patients?
10th June 2016   'Living Tomorrow' Conference Centre Indringingsweg 1, 1800 Vilvoorde, Brussels, Belgium

Alzheimer’s disease is arguably the largest healthcare issue of our time, with over 45 million people currently diagnosed with dementia worldwide. With the single biggest risk factor being age, this number is only going to increase as our populations’ age. The human impact of this is huge for patients and their families, but the financial impact to our health care systems is also going to be enormous. In the US alone, Alzheimer’s disease is the 6th leading cause of death, with over 5.4 million people affected and health care costs in excess of $400 billion and expected to rise to over $1 trillion by 2050. Alzheimer’s disease pathology is highly complex, but is believed to be principally the result of an inter-play between the toxic proteins beta-amyloid and tau and driven by several genetic and environmental risk factors. Current treatments focus on treating cognitive and behavioural symptoms but have only modest effects and duration of efficacy. Alzheimer’s disease has no cure or even therapeutics which slows the progression of this disease, although a number are currently in clinical development. So it is clear that there is a huge need to find treatment options for patients and their families.

While considerable resources have been directed towards finding “disease modifying” drugs by multiple pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, the results from several large clinical trials have been mixed. This symposium will look at the progress that the field has made over recent years in attempting to target different aspects and stages of Alzheimer’s disease pathology and what lessons have been learned. It will also look at the current biological mechanisms under clinical and pre-clinical evaluation, together with exploring how new and developing genetic insights into the disease are directing us to novel mechanisms for potential new treatment options.

Leading experts from industry and academia have been brought together for an exciting symposium to review, challenge and debate this complex disease biology and to address the critical question - “Are we making progress towards a disease modifying treatment for patients?”