Dr. Merrill predicted it will be a while before any vaccines are available to the public.
“It’s still going to be a number of years before any vaccine is able to get through the development process, the regulatory hurdles, [and] the phases of clinical trials,” he pointed out.
Dr. Snyder agreed, and stated that the studies to date have been very small or in mice.
“More research in large, diverse human populations are needed before we can comment on the potential usefulness of a vaccine for protecting against or treating Alzheimer’s,” she advised.
Additionally, Dr. Merrill said people may be hesitant towards a dementia vaccine depending on how long the vaccination process may take.
“If you look at the early stage trials, the scheduling or the dosing of the vaccines can be quite variable,” he detailed. “In concept, you might hope for just a single dose vaccine and you would be protected, but the reality may be it might take a series. Monthly vaccination shots for a year is one design.”
“And the question is how interested will people be in getting this?” Dr. Merrill asked. “Clearly, if it truly protects and prevents you from getting Alzheimer’s, I think people would line up and would be very interested. But it’s all in the development of this — this is where it’s uncertain.”
Will dementia vaccines really work?
On the other side of the dementia vaccine argument is Dr. Karl Herrup, professor of neurobiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
He told MNT the dementia vaccines attempt to harness the power of the immune system to fight the biology of dementia and are all based on the hypothesis that deposits of misfolded proteins — amyloid, tau, and others — are the root causes of the disease.
“The vaccines, though differing in their strategies, are all based on using antibodies to the deposits to deplete and/ or remove them,” he explained.
“The bad news is that despite this biochemical success there is no meaningful clinical benefit to the therapies. Indeed in some trials, people on the drug actually fared worse than those on placebo. Many of us, myself included, have long argued that the hypothesis of aggregate-caused dementia rests on shaky grounds,” said Dr. Herrup.
“For us, the results were a bitter disappointment,” Dr. Herrup added. “I would rather be wrong and have a useful Alzheimer’s disease therapy than be right and have to have millions of people continue to suffer, but the results were not surprising.”
Dr. Herrup said that, in his opinion, the only important question about a dementia vaccine or treatment, for that matter, is whether the treatment slows or stops the clinical symptoms of the disease — cognitive decline and behavioral symptoms.
“I predict that none of these therapies will meaningfully alter the disease course,” he continued. “Sadly, since the industry poured most of its resources into these approaches, ignoring or sometimes repressing other avenues of investigation, it will be years before any meaningful therapies are available. For now, the best approaches are non-pharmacological.”
The vaccine candidate, UB-311, has completed phase 1 and 2A clinical trials, with phase 2B expected to begin in late 2022
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