It is very difficult to engineer animals with symptoms mimicking human dementia so they can effectively be trialed with drugs before testing on people.
This is the exact reason dementia / Alzheimer’s research is littered with dozens of high-profile failed clinical trials; after billions and decades poured into this area and nothing to show.
I would be interested to see non-murine, primate-based(?) clinical findings before I get my hopes up again. We have seen this pattern too many times; a compelling agent, pathway, or signaling mechanism is found, targeted, and shows great promise in mice, even sometimes in primates. And once we get to human trials it fails because we cannot replicate dementia accurately in these test vehicles.
I'm not seeing much mention of diet and gut biome in these comments, over the last decade they're linking satisfactorily the gut to so many different ailments in later life, including Alzheimer's and dementia. Additionally studies are linking diet/gut Flora to stuff like autism, some inflammatory diseases, etc.
If I was born 15 years later I'd probably have gone into that field of study as it probably makes the most fiscal sense - from a national medicine standpoint - to combat these disorders and diseases at the actual source.
I wonder if there's been a metastudy on the median lifespan going up and incidence of these cognitive or neurological disorders. That is, now that humans on average are living longer, perhaps our diets are more important; and with his knowledge we can get some enhancements on regulations from the FDA or something.
This is the exact reason dementia / Alzheimer’s research is littered with dozens of high-profile failed clinical trials; after billions and decades poured into this area and nothing to show.
I would be interested to see non-murine, primate-based(?) clinical findings before I get my hopes up again. We have seen this pattern too many times; a compelling agent, pathway, or signaling mechanism is found, targeted, and shows great promise in mice, even sometimes in primates. And once we get to human trials it fails because we cannot replicate dementia accurately in these test vehicles.