Donanemab: Not two without a third

Abstract

Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved 2 anti-amyloid monoclonal antibodies, aducanumab (June 7, 2021) and lecanemab (July 6, 2023), for the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients, and will most likely also approve a 3rd one, donanemab, soon. While these antibodies have been shown to significantly reduce amyloid in the brain, there is little, if any, evidence that they provide clinically meaningful benefit for AD patients by slowing cognitive decline. I have said it before, and I say it again: the reported benefits of anti-amyloid antibodies observed in clinical trials are erroneous and based on misinterpretation of data and a trivial miscalculation. For example, Sims et al. (2023) reported in a phase III clinical trial that donanemab treatment of early symptomatic AD patients with amyloid and tau pathology provided 35% and 36% slowing of clinical progression and cognitive decline, respectively, as measured using the Integrated Alzheimer's Disease Rating Scale (iADRS) and Clinical Dementia Rating-Sum of Boxes (CDR-SB) psychometric tests. Here, in this editorial, I show that 2.5% and 9.6% would be better estimates for less cognitive impairment with donanemab treatment.

Keywords: Alzheimer; amyloid; clinical trial; donanemab.