Others involved in the battle against Alzheimer's responded to the outcome.

“We can’t stop now and we can’t slow down,” Maria Carrillo, chief science officer at the Alzheimer’s Association told Bloomberg. “This is basically a death sentence for those who receive the diagnosis. We need to get answers that will give us some relief.”


"There are other approaches that we need to pursue. We need to redouble our efforts," she stressed, according to the Associated Press.

Others at work in the field also weighed in on the findings.

"These results, while disappointing for the Alzheimer's disease patient community, still provide scientific insights into the pathological basis of Alzheimer's disease," Susan Catalano, Ph.D., the founder and chief science officer of Cognition Therapeutics, a clinical-stage neuroscience company, said in a statement. "We view the statement that the responses in the trial directionally favored solanezumab as support for the amyloid hypothesis. This hypothesis has significantly evolved since solanezumab started clinical development, with clear evidence supporting the oligomeric form of the amyloid protein as the culprit that sets Alzheimer's disease in motion."

That said, one issue is that the results could mean that amyloid-targeting plays a role but intervention needs to begin earlier, in a person's 40s or 50s, Sam Gandy, associate director of the Mount Sinai Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center in New York explained to Bloomberg.

“My concern is it’s so early it will be difficult to target unless you have a drug that’s perfectly safe. It would mean decades of exposure.”

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