Can AI help find a cure for Alzheimer’s?

Artificial intelligence (AI) may not yet be advanced enough to cure Alzheimer’s, but it can accelerate the search for more effective treatments, according to research from the University of Cambridge.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge used AI to streamline clinical trials for Alzheimer’s medicine, demonstrating that the technology can make them more effective and efficient. This, in turn, has accelerated the search for new medication.

An AI model was used to reassess the results of a completed clinical trial for a drug that slowed cognitive decline by 46% in a group of patients with early-stage, slow-progressing cognitive impairment that can progress to Alzheimer’s.

According to the University of Cambridge, using AI allowed the team to split trial participants into two groups – either slowly or rapidly progressing towards the disease – and then examine the effects of the drug on each group.

“Promising new drugs fail when given to people too late, when they have no chance of benefiting from them. With our AI model, we can finally identify patients precisely and match the right patients to the right drugs,” said Professor Zoe Kourtzi, senior author of the study.

“This makes trials more precise, so they can progress faster and cost less, turbocharging the search for a desperately needed precision medicine approach for dementia treatment,” she said.

A more precise selection of trial participants using AI could help select those patients who are most likely to benefit from treatment, potentially reducing the cost of developing new medicines.

The model developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge predicts if and how quickly people in early stages of cognitive decline will progress to full-blown Alzheimer’s. According to the researchers, its predictions are three times more accurate than standard clinical assessments based on memory tests, MRI scans, and blood tests.

“This AI-enabled approach could have a significant impact on easing NHS pressure and costs in dementia care by enabling more personalised drug development,” said Joanna Dempsey, principal advisor at Health Innovation East England.

Leading cause of death

While drugs developed as part of the study are not intended as cures for Alzheimer’s, they can reduce cognitive decline so that patients don’t get worse.

“AI can guide us to the patients who will benefit from dementia medicines, by treating them at the stage when the drugs will make a difference, so we can finally start fighting back against these cruel diseases. Making clinical trials faster, cheaper, and better, guided by AI, has strong potential to accelerate discovery of new precise treatments for individual patients, reducing side effects and costs for healthcare services,” said Kourtzi.

She added: “Like many people, I have watched hopelessly as dementia stole a loved one from me. We’ve got to accelerate the development of dementia medicines. Over £40 billion [$53 billion] has already been spent over thirty years of research and development – we can’t wait another thirty years.”

Despite decades of research, clinical trials of treatments for dementia have been largely unsuccessful, with the failure rate for new treatments “unreasonably high” at 95%, despite $43 billion having been spent on research and development, according to the University of Cambridge.

Dementia is a leading case of death in the UK, and a major cause of mortality globally, costing $1.3 trillion per year – and that’s before it’s expected to treble by 2050. The new research was funded by the Royal Society, Alan Turing Institute, and Welcome. The results of the study are published in the journal Nature Communications.