How a discontinued Alzheimer’s drug study got a second life

“MY FIRST REACTION WAS TO BE ANGRY,” SAYS JOANN Wooding. “I’ve gotten over that, and is more the word right now.” Wooding’s husband Peter, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in 2016, was among the more than 3,200 people with the disease who volunteered to test a promising drug called aducanumab. In earlier study results released the same year, the drug, developed by Biogen, a U.S. biotech company, and Eisai, a Japanese pharmaceutical manufacturer, seemed to accomplish a number of firsts for people with Alzheimer’s. It appeared to shrink deposits of the protein amyloid accumulating in the brains of patients and, perhaps more important, also slow the cognitive decline