Five ques­tions on the fu­ture of Lil­ly’s Alzheimer’s drug, from Dunn’s lega­cy to ARIA

Just days ago, suc­cess in Eli Lil­ly’s 30-year pur­suit of an Alzheimer’s dis­ease drug seemed all but guar­an­teed. Now, the FDA’s 11th-hour de­ci­sion to con­vene a com­mit­tee of in­de­pen­dent ex­perts could de­lay a rul­ing on do­nanemab for months.

Ac­cord­ing to Lil­ly, reg­u­la­tors are es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ed in dis­cussing the drug’s safe­ty, the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to stop treat­ment once it clears up amy­loid plaques, and analy­ses that sug­gest lev­els of the brain pro­tein tau can pre­dict how well a per­son re­sponds to treat­ment.

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