Learn about Alzheimer's Disease

“One of the dimensions of denial is that this disease is a lot more visible from the outside than it is from the inside. My wife and family decided I needed to get checked.”

— [Alzheimer's patient]

Our understanding of the disease and how it progresses has grown dramatically since the early days of Dr. Alzheimer. Yet, a century later there are still no treatments available that halt Alzheimer's disease progression. The search for such a disease-modifying treatment continues with these studies and the investigational study drug, LMTM.

Alzheimer's disease is growing and the cost of caring for those with Alzheimer's is a major concern for many families. Clinicians devoted to Alzheimer's disease have been waiting for a promising agent with disease-modifying properties, and it requires clinical trials such as these to unlock the answers.

Alzheimer's is named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer, a German physician who first identified the disease and tangles in the brain of a patient in 1906. Tau tangles are a hallmark of Alzheimer's. They first appear in the brain some 30 years before the clinical symptoms become apparent. From the earliest detectable stages of the disease, there are well established links between tau tangles and Alzheimer's. Tau tangles first destroy nerve cells critical for memory and then destroy neurons in other parts of the brain.

Over the years, many different theories have emerged to explain the underlying processes of Alzheimer's. For the past 20 years, research and drug development has focused on the β‐amyloid hypothesis: that plaque in the brain plays a central role in clinical dementia. However, after many failed research studies involving drugs targeted to plaques, this may not be the case.

There is an urgent need to find a treatment that is disease-modifying treatment that may also prevent Alzheimer's. This study targeting tangles in the brain is an important step in addressing the need to find an Alzheimer's treatment that works! It takes your involvement to make this happen.