Vaccines Addressing Tau Pathology and Neuroinflammation in Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) are a devastating group of diseases and a leading cause of death worldwide. There are no therapeutics for ADRD to prevent, stop, or reverse disease progression. Thus, there is a need for the development of novel therapies. Vaccines offer the potential to generate long-lasting and specific antibody responses against their target while being cheaper and more accessible than monoclonal antibody therapies, allowing us to harness our own immune system to fight these diseases. We developed and characterized novel vaccines targeting pathological tau and the inflammasome complex, two key drivers of ADRD, in pre-clinical animal models. These vaccines can reduce ADRD brain pathology, including tau accumulation and neuroinflammation, and rescue cognitive deficits, without adverse events. These findings support future clinical investigations of these novel vaccines for the prevention and treatment of ADRD in humans.