On January 7, Pfizer announced that it would stop development of all current new drugs for Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson's disease, and lay off 300 employees in the next months.
On January 9, Takeda Pharmaceutical announced that it reached strategic cooperation with Denali, to jointly develop therapies for neurodegenerative diseases, with the total amount to exceed USD 1 billion, including 2 Alzheimer’s disease projects.
On January 10, Xinhua Pharmaceutical announced that it entered into the contract for "development of the innovative drug OAB-14 and preparations for Alzheimer’s disease" with Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, and would pay RMB 100 million for the development of Alzheimer’s disease drugs.

The pharmaceutical giants that entered early in the field have suffered R&D setbacks and quit, but this does not stop other companies from continuing to seek the light of victory.
Introduction
Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a serious neurodegenerative disease. AD patients are forecast to reach above 115 million by 2050, with the resulting direct social costs second only to cancer treatment. There are only a few AD drugs available clinically. In the face of such huge market demands, pharmaceutical enterprises have been highly enthusiastic about R&D of new drugs for AD, however, the unknown pathogenesis and the disease characteristics lead to new drug R&D failure rate of up to 99%, and the field becomes the hardest-hit area to new drug R&D.
Pharmaceutical enterprises have made great efforts in developing new drugs for AD, however, there have been hundreds of compounds entering the clinical trials over the 15 years after the U.S. FDA approved memantine for AD in 2003, but none of them is approved for marketing, and even many drugs with immense potential suffered crushing defeats in Phase III clinical trials due to serious adverse reactions or insufficient treatment effectiveness. The new drug R&D for AD are highly challenging.
Lucky stars of patients—the approved AD drugs
The AD drugs currently approved include many acetylcholinesterase inhibitors and the memantine that affects the glutamatergic system, which can alleviate some symptoms of AD by strengthening cholinergic signal transduction and improving acetylcholine level, but cannot completely cure the disease or contain the dementia progression.
Drugs Approved for AD Treatment










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