Even with this, you're still 20 years away from working clinical trials. These drugs are a dead end until the industry and the FDA come to a firm agreement on what biomarker represents Alzheimer's, and what that time scale looks like. They will never get past phase two clinical trials. 20 year clinical trials are just too expensive, and the patent window is too short.
Also, there are mice with genetic engineering to approximate Alzheimer's.
>This did not go over particularly well with the large group of biologists in the room, most of whom had built their careers conducting research on worms, flies, mice and rats
Its really offensive to me that many in the research community seem to prioritize publication count and reputation over meaningful research. This is antithetical to the practice science, and stymies progress by forcing entire fields into stagnation and dead ends. How long have we been chasing the amyloid plaque hypothesis, for example?
Perhaps my opinion would be different if my livelihood depended on my paper count, but if that's the case then maybe it's time for a realignment of incentives in academia, not to imply that such a cultural shift would be trivial...
Not arguing with your point, but the blame shouldn't entirely be attributed to the research community. It's easy to read about the various parasitic practices conducted by academic & government administrations.
People who do science professionally know all about the competitive nature of the academic & research job market & "publish or perish". Just like anyone else, scientists are at least somewhat motivated by financial stability and career progression.
Anybody that only see "worms", "flies", mice and rats is showing that is illiterate about biology. Totally clueless about the importance of the most basic things in lab research.
Also, there are mice with genetic engineering to approximate Alzheimer's.