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A vaccine against Alzheimer's disease has successfully completed clinical trials
Medical expert of the article
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
Scientists from the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) report the first positive effect from an active vaccine against Alzheimer's disease.
The vaccine, codenamed CAD106, is being hailed as a breakthrough in the long search for a cure for this very serious disease that causes dementia and ultimately death. A report on its development and trials has been published in the journal Lancet Neurology.
Alzheimer's disease is a complex neurological disorder characterized by progressive dementia. According to statistics from the World Health Organization, dementia is the fastest growing global epidemic of our time. The prevailing hypothesis about the causes of the disease places all the blame on the protein APP, which is located in the outer membranes of nerve cells and which, instead of peacefully breaking down at a certain time, as proteins should, avoids this fate by forming a harmful substance - beta-amyloid. The latter accumulates in the form of plaques and kills brain cells.
There is no cure for Alzheimer's. All that can be done is to alleviate the symptoms. However, scientists do not give up, and the work to find effective therapeutic agents does not stop for a second. Unfortunately, the clinical trials of the first candidate for the title of anti-Alzheimer's vaccine, which were conducted almost ten years ago, were accompanied by too many negative side effects and were quickly curtailed. The principle of the vaccine used then was to activate certain white blood cells (T-cells), which began to attack their own brain matter. It sounds repulsive, and if you remember about the "negative side effects", then it becomes simply scary for the test subjects.
The new vaccine is different in spirit from the first unsuccessful development. The principle of the current drug is based on active immunization, which triggers an immune defense reaction against beta-amyloids, and not the patient’s own brain tissue.
In human clinical trials, 80% of patients developed their own antibodies against beta-amyloid without any side effects over the three years of testing. Thus, it should be recognized that the CAD106 vaccine is a tolerable therapeutic agent for people with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease.
But these were small tests, now it’s time for full-scale long-term tests of a promising product...