A vaccine meant to stop Alzheimer's before it starts just got a faster road to testing

Most Alzheimer's treatments begin after memory is already slipping away. Nuravax, a spin-out of the nonprofit Institute for Molecular Medicine in Irvine, California, is aiming earlier — at people whose brains show the disease's amyloid buildup but who still think clearly. On October 20, the US Food and Drug Administration granted its vaccine, AV-1959R, fast-track designation, a status meant to speed development of treatments for serious conditions with no good options; no preventive therapy is approved for this group today. In the small first human study, all 12 vaccine recipients developed antibodies against amyloid. A 160-person phase 2 trial, AREVIA, comes next — a long road, but now a faster one.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation