Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s charities fast-track drug reuse to cut treatment delays

20 June 2025, 07:12

Scientists are to examine whether drugs that are already in use could be repurposed to treat the symptoms of both Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s.

The new collaboration aims to discover novel treatments at pace.

Experts say that by repurposing drugs, they can “increase the shots on target” at tackling the diseases.

This method of drug development could also reduce the time patients are left waiting for new treatments by up to 10 years, they added.

It comes after the NHS spending watchdog rejected the use of new Alzheimer’s drugs lecanemab and donanemab for widespread use in the health service.

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The drugs were approved for use in the UK last year by the UK’s medicines regulator but the NHS spending watchdog, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), said they could not be used in the NHS because the benefits are “too small” to justify the cost.

Now charities Cure Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s Research UK have joined forces to find current drugs that may tackle some of the common biology behind both diseases.

After presentations to the International Linked Clinical Trials (iLCT), which was set up by Cure Parkinson’s over a decade ago, experts from both fields will select the most promising drugs for both Parkinson’s and dementia, so they can be moved quickly into clinical trials.

Weight loss jabs are already being investigated for their effectiveness in treating symptoms of both diseases and experts hope to uncover more drugs that can have multiple uses.

Semaglutide, the active ingredient for weight loss and diabetes drugs Wegovy and Ozempic, is being examined in clinical trials to see whether it can help patients with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s.

Trial results for the Alzheimer’s trial are expected to be published later this year.

Dr Sheona Scales, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, told the PA news agency that the iLCT project had already been “hugely successful” with people who have Parkinson’s, adding: “Around 30% of disease modifying therapies that are in clinical trials for Parkinson’s disease came through this process.

“What we wanted to do is to build on their knowledge and experience and expertise in order to be able to bring a process similar to that to Alzheimer’s disease.”

Dr Scales said that there are some “common grounds” between Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s – both are neurodegenerative diseases and have some “common biological processes” – such as inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction and “protein misfolding” – which could be targets for repurposed drugs.

“Getting multiple drugs that are targeting the disease is really important to us,” she said.

“Testing different types of drugs and getting as many shots on target is important.”

She said: “Repurposed drugs have already been demonstrated to be safe for use in humans development of new drugs for different diseases is a long process.

“What essentially bringing repurposed drugs does, is help to accelerate the drug development pipeline – it could save between five and 10 years within that process, compared to taking a new drug through clinical trials for the very first time.”

Helen Matthews, chief executive of Cure Parkinson’s, said the iLCT was originally set up to identify drugs that can potentially “slow down, stop or reverse Parkinson’s”.

She added: “It was through this programme that we realised that there were so many drugs that were also being looked at in the dementia field and there were commonalities there in terms of the drugs looking to reduce inflammation, or whatever it might be, there were specific pathways that those drugs were working on that could be beneficial for both disease areas.

“So given that we were already doing the (work) every year, it made sense to join forces in this way, just to add efficiencies.

“Because if you’re looking at the same drugs, we’ll only do that digging once, you know, only do that compilation of the dossiers once, so that you can actually take the learning for both diseases and then actually look and see which might be beneficial.”

She said that the “sharing of knowledge and digging” could also be shared with other disease areas, such as MS.

And on lecanemab and donanemab, Dr Scales added: “(These) were the first disease-targeting therapies that have been licensed in the UK, but obviously are not available on the NHS at the moment.

“They showed for the very first time that we were able to alter the course of the disease.

“And what we’re looking forward to now is what the next generation of treatments can bring us and how we can target different parts of the disease.”

Dr Lucy Devendra, head of research at Alzheimer’s Society, said: “Repurposing medicines which are already known to be safe can help us find new treatments for the diseases that cause dementia much quicker.

“Although it is still early days, it’s encouraging to see a renewed focus on this type of research and development.”