Despite being identified over 100 years ago, the cause of Alzheimer’s disease is still not well understood. Unfortunately, drug development for AD has proven to be very difficult, with few successes and many failures. Currently, only 5 drugs are approved for the treatment of AD including 4 cholinesterase inhibitors (tacrine, donepezil, rivastigmine, galantamine) and an N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist (memantine). No new compounds have been approved for AD since 2003. Many failures in AD drug development have occurred, with both small molecules and immunotherapies failing to show significant effects or having unacceptable toxicity. As a result, there is a tremendous need for innovative AD therapies.

The lack of new treatments and the repeated failure of pipeline drugs have significantly impacted not only the lives of patients and associated family members, but also the economies of many developed and emerging countries. In 2013, it was calculated that the total cost for dementia care (largely AD) in the US was $215 billion. Further calculations demonstrated that the increasing prevalence of dementia, due to the aging of the US population will result in an increase of nearly 80% in total societal costs by 2040, with total care costs of approximately $511 billion. Therefore, the development of new treatments that delay onset or progression of the disease is desperately needed¹. As the number of elderly surges in Asia, so does the prevalence of AD. Globally, the number of people with dementia is expected to increase to 135 million in 2050 with almost half of these cases coming from the Asia Pacific region²