Worldwide, around 55 million people have dementia, and there are nearly 10 million new cases every year, reaching about 150m cases in 2050 (WHO 2020). Dementia is a progressive disease, leading to a gradual loss of brain functions and to death within 10 years. Alzheimer's disease is the most common form of dementia and contribute to 60–70% of cases. Thus, Alzheimer's disease is one of the largest unmet healthcare challenges of our time.

The socioeconomic costs of Alzheimer´s disease are enormous

More than 1% of the annual global value creation is spent on nursing our old and demented. According to recent estimates by Alzheimer's disease International, more than 80% of all individuals living in nursing homes have dementia, and the number of demented persons requiring nursing will triple by 2050. There is a huge unmet medical need for novel interventions to treat Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

Our understanding of the disease biology is rapidly evolving

Despite intense efforts to discover and develop novel drugs for AD, no cure has been found for dementia and the only treatments available until recently gives symptomatic relief. This may be due to the large heterogeneity of dementia. The recent introduction of monoclonal antibody drugs is promising and has renewed the interest in the development of therapeutics for dementia. However, there is still a large unmet medical need for therapies that target other mechanisms of dementia pathology.