Groundbreaking Alzheimer’s treatment could arrive in Australia next year

A vital first step towards prevention, treatment and a cure for Alzheimer’s has been made — and patients will soon reap the benefits.

Director of the Australian Dementia ­Network Professor Christopher Rowe. Picture: Christopher Hopkins

A new drug hailed as a game-changer for the treatment of Alzheimer’s could be available in Australia as early as next year.

Early results from clinical trials of the drug Lecanemab indicate it may help to clear the protein amyloid in the brain and slow down cognitive decline by about 27 per cent.

The results of the global third-phase clinical trials, which included Victorian ­patients and researchers, were considered so important they were released a month early by the Japanese developer Eisai Co and its partner Biogen Inc.

Experts worldwide are ­applauding the results as promising as they wait on the final data to be released next month.

“This is a big moment,” Professor Christopher Rowe said. “But it is not a cure. It is a vital first step towards prevention, treatment and cure.”

Professor Rowe is the director of the Australian Dementia ­Network, which is led by the University of Melbourne, and a nuclear medicine physician and neurologist at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne.

He helped develop the scan criteria for the study.

“The results are exciting because they confirm that treatments that remove amyloid are on the right path and have a real benefit when given to people with established symptoms of Alzheimer’s,” he said.

The scans that Professor Rowe, an international leader in the field, developed were “enormously important” ­because they helped measure the effectiveness of new drugs.

“ADNeT was involved because we recognise the need to come up with treatments and hopefully one day a cure for Alzheimer’s,” he said.

“We do what we can to speed up clinical trials so we can keep moving forward.”

Worldwide, almost 1800 people were part of the study.

It included Victorians recruited by Dr Paul Yates, a principal investigator and deputy director of Aged Care Research at Austin Health.

The drug is delivered as an infusion every two weeks to patients who were all in the early stages of the debilitating disease, a leading cause of ­dementia.

Around 450,000 Australians are living with dementia with some 50,000 new cases diagnosed each year. It is a major cost to the health budget and the cause of more than half of all admissions into nursing homes.

Professor Rowe is now recruiting a further 400 Australian volunteers for the next phase of trials using the drug to delay or prevent Alzheimer’s dementia in people who have amyloid in the brain as shown on a scan, but have not yet developed symptoms.

Those interested can find more details on the Australian Dementia Network website.