Why is there still no cure for Alzheimer’s?

From The Saturday Paper, 25 April 2026:

Over the past three decades, tens of billions of dollars have been spent on research to identify, develop and test drugs to remove from the brain plaques that are understood to cause Alzheimer’s disease – the neurodegenerative disorder that is now the leading cause of death in Australia. That quest is littered with failures. This month, a report concluded what many had long suspected – that the strategy touted and funded as a “breakthrough” intervention in the disease offers “little to no difference in cognitive function” relative to a placebo.

The findings are a crucial challenge to the theory that has informed the vast bulk of Alzheimer’s drug research – that it should target the build-up of those plaques, or amyloids, in the brain.   

“I give credit where credit is due to those scientists who were on that cutting edge at the time,” says Bryce Vissel, a neuroscientist at the University of New South Wales. But as time went on, more and more studies failed to show clinical benefits in targeting amyloid, yet the bulk of research still focused on it and it still received the lion’s share of research dollars. Read more (paywall).