June 3, 2025

The Alzheimer’s Drug Pipeline 2025

Each year, Dr Jeffrey Cummings and colleagues compile the data for Phase 1,2 and 3 trials currently active in the Alzheimer’s drug space. This year, we had experts at the Science Media Centre to talk us through his latest paper and what drug development for Alzheimer’s looks like right now. While we’ve all heard a lot about the monoclonal anti-amyloid antibodies (aducanumab, lecanemab and donanemab) over recent years, there’s a great deal more happening with multiple trial results expected in 2025, including twelve phase 3 trials. The paper was published in the journal, Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions.

Journalists came to this briefing to hear:

• What are some of the most exciting drugs in the dementia drug discovery pipeline right now?
• How has Alzheimer’s drug development changed over the years?
• Beyond the anti-amyloid drugs, what other types of drugs are being studied?
• Which are Disease-Targeted Therapies (DTT) and which are targeting symptoms? How do we think they might work?
• What about repurposed drugs?
• Which drugs are we expecting phase 3 data on this year?
• What clinical research is currently going on in the UK?

Speakers included:

Sheona Scales, Director of Research, Alzheimer’s Research UK

Emma Mead, Chief Scientific Officer for Oxford Drug Discovery Institute

Prof James Rowe, Professor of Cognitive Neurology at the University of Cambridge and Consultant Neurologist