[lawrenceyan]

I'd argue the reason we’ve spun our wheels on Alzheimer's for decades isn't just about a flawed amyloid model. It’s a symptom of a much larger, dying paradigm in biotech.

For decades, the industry standard was to hunt for targeted small molecules to solve singular biological issues. And to be fair, I don't think this was because of a lack of vision as it was simply the strict limit of our technological capabilities at the time. But attempting to treat a cascading, systemic disease like Alzheimer's with a single targeted molecule is like hoping replacing one pipe will solve the problem when the issue is that the entire plumbing system is corroding.

This fundamental mismatch is exactly why clinical progress has stalled, and I believe the future of treating Alzheimer's will instead closely mirror how our approach to oncology has evolved.

We spent years searching for a universal molecule to cure cancer before we accepted reality. We now know that effective treatment often requires sequencing a tumor's mutanome to develop a highly personalized intervention for the individual. As neurodegenerative systems fail with age, we face that exact same biological complexity. A traditional small molecule is not going to rescue a globally failing network.

My personal take is that we won't see a true breakthrough in Alzheimer's until capital fully rotates out of these legacy, single-target pipelines and into programmable biological systems.