Breakthrough Alzheimer’s drug offers hope as South Florida becomes a magnet for research and cutting-edge trials

Florida’s diverse elderly population is playing a key role in breakthrough Alzheimer’s research, contributing in a big way to the trials that led to this week’s announcement of the first medicine to clearly blunt the progression of the disease.

The state hosted 36 trial sites for the experimental drug lecanemab, which researchers say reduced the pace of cognitive decline in people with early disease by 27% over 18 months when compared with a placebo. They are calling the trial’s results “a historic moment for dementia treatment,”

More than half a million people suffer from Alzheimer’s in Florida, and the lecanemab trial is one of several dozen research efforts underway to slow down or even prevent the disease.

Advancements cannot come fast enough.

Florida has the second-highest number of Alzheimer’s patients over 65 after California, and Alzheimer’s diagnoses are expected to increase 24% in the state by 2025, according to the Alzheimer’s Association 2022 Alzheimer’s Disease Facts and Figures report. Most large-scale national trials seek to enroll Florida’s culturally and ethnically diverse older population, and millions of federal and state dollars are being directed to the state for research.

From universities to brain and memory clinics, scientists and doctors are recruiting patients who are predisposed to Alzeheimer’s through genetics, or in varying stages of the disease. Their research includes exercise therapies, high-tech interventions and new medications.

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Brain Matters Research in Delray Beach participated in the lecanemab trials and saw the intravenous drug’s potential. The center focuses solely on Alzheimer’s research and has 21 clinical trials. Tequesta Alston, community liaison at Brain Matters Research, said the positive results from lecanemab offer hope. The medication appears to slow the disease, but it doesn’t completely stop memory loss.

“The trial is still going on,” Alston said. “There are risks and benefits to every drug, but early on we had a sense lecanemab was working.”

Manufacturers Eisai Co. and partner Biogen are expected to apply for FDA approval for lecanemab in the U.S. and Europe by the end of the year.

In the last year alone, increased federal and state funding for research has fueled attention to the disease in Florida. The governor’s newest budget includes $52.3 million for Alzheimer’s and dementia research and care. Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia, progressively destroys the brain’s ability to function, including areas that control memory. Healthcare for those who have the condition can be costly, providing incentive for the government to find solutions not just for a cure, but also for ways to manage, slow, or delay symptoms.

Alston at Brain Matters Research said she makes a concerted effort to include black and brown people in the Alzheimer’s trials at her center. The trials run the gamut from gathering data off an Apple watch to blood draws to experimental nicotine patches to medications, she said. “In South Florida, we see a lot of caregivers who want to get their family into a trial,” she said.

Based on trial results, Alston believes at least two new drugs will become FDA-approved for Alzheimer’s and on the market by the end of next year.

Meanwhile, the research continues, as does government support.

“South Florida attracts older folks and a larger portion of that population is at risk,” said Dr. Shaye Moskowitz, a neurosurgeon with Broward Health Physician Group. “The cost of care to the state is extremely high. The opportunity to impact that population here in Florida is huge.”

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Moskowitz is the primary investigator for state-funded research launching in Florida next month called the Blood Brain Barrier clinical trial. The treatment uses MRI-guided, focused low-frequency ultrasound to permeate the brain-blood barrier and allow the abnormal levels of built-up plaque in Alzheimer’s patients to leak out.

“How much will come out, no one knows,” Moskowitz said. “This is a novel approach. We hope to get answers.”

Moskowitz said patients will participate for five years and undergo brain imaging along the way. The goal is to learn whether removing plaque in this way can control the disease earlier, he said.

In Palm Beach County, Dr. Arif Dalvi, medical director of the Memory Disorder Center at St. Mary’s Medical Center in Delray Beach, also will participate in the Blood Brain Barrier trial. His center is recruiting patients with mild, early-stage Alzheimer’s.

“It’s an innovative, completely new approach to a major problem,” he said. “We are applying technology to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s.”

State universities also look to Florida’s diverse elderly population for Alzheimer’s studies. Researchers at Florida International University, University of Miami, Florida Atlantic University and University of North Florida have secured grants to study whether computerized brain-training exercises can reduce the risk of cognitive impairment, whether environmental factors like pesticides can trigger the disease, whether there are sleep effects on brain health in the Hispanic community, and how to spot early changes in the aging brain of adults.

While most Alzheimer’s trials target seniors, some are recruiting younger Floridians. A new Alzheimer’s study underway in South Florida is aimed at people as young as 50 at the earliest stages of the disease. The study is a trial for a pill for people who have a gene that makes them susceptible to Alzheimer’s. The Alzheimer’s Research and Treatment Center in Wellington began recruiting in September for the trial.

Last year, the FDA approved the first new drug for the Alzheimer’s disease in nearly 20 years. But critics felt there was not enough evidence that Aduhelm works to slow cognitive decline, and Medicare has declined to cover the medication.

Still, the Alzheimer’s Association expressed hope last week for those living with the disease as advancements like lecanemab begin to show promise.

South Florida health reporter Cindy Goodman can be reached at cgoodman@sunsentinel.com