Traditional Chinese medicine for Alzheimer's disease

Over the past two decades, there have been no new drugs for Alzheimer's disease (AD)―except for FDA's controversial approval of aducanumab [1], a beta-amyloid targeting monoclonal antibody, and the recent success of an intravenous drug called lecanemab. The lack of effective treatment created a yawning gap in the needs of the millions of people living in the shadow of dementia. Numerous seemingly promising disease-modifying monotherapies failed to demonstrate statistical significance when compared with placebo in phase 3 clinical trials [2]. Given the combination therapy is now commonly employed against conditions like cardiovascular disease and HIV infection, it seems unreasonable to expect that a single “magic bullet” would be highly effective in preventing or slowing the onset and progression of the intractable diseases such as AD with a complex pathology [2]. The combination treatment strategy has been used in traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for millennia and still widely applied in clinical practice today. Might alternative strategies, such as TCM, offer new perspectives that can benefit the discovery and development of novel therapeutics for AD?