Every two weeks, a nurse visits Marty Reiswig in Denver, Colorado, and injects him with an experimental drug called gantenerumab. Every month, Reiswig drives into town to see a neurologist to make sure there hasn’t been a cerebral hemorrhage. Finally, he flies once a year to St. Louis, Missouri, for four days of brain scans, spinal taps, blood tests, and tests of his memory and thinking skills. The 43-year-old is fit, healthy and runs two local businesses. Why is he taking all this upon himself?
Reiswig is a carrier of a rare mutation that virtually guarantees that he will develop Alzheimer’s disease at an early age. The first symptoms should appear in a few years. However, he hopes that the international clinical study he has been participating in for the past nine years will prevent or at least delay that. “I do my best to give as much as I can to the researchers – even if it doesn’t help me, it could help my children,” he says.
Several studies aim to find out whether the battle against Alzheimer’s is best won if it starts before the first symptoms appear. The tried-and-tested drugs are antibodies that specifically eliminate beta-amyloid proteins in the brain, which accumulate to form the harmful Alzheimer’s plaques. The drugs are of the same type as Biogen’s aducanumab, which the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) fast-tracked in 2021 for the treatment of mild cases of Alzheimer’s.