Real quick: A new Alzheimer’s drug may be on the horizon… and it could be much more effective than what’s currently on the market:

Take a Scottish scientist and a Singapore investor who met because their sons were schoolmates. Add in the accidental discovery that a 100-year-old malaria drug can repair damaged brains. The result is one of the few bright spots amid a slew of notable failures in Alzheimer’s drug development.

TauRx Therapeutics, a private company based in Singapore, just reported that its drug Rember reduced mental decline by 81% over 12 months in a small phase II trial. The results have yet to be published and need to be confirmed by a larger trial. But so far, Rember has outperformed high-profile Alzheimer’s drugs made by far larger companies. And it works by going after a completely different target.

Virtually every major pharmaceutical and biotech company is trying to develop a drug that can reverse or delay Alzheimer’s, the biggest unmet medical need out there. Pfizer’s Aricept and three other drugs now in use can only alleviate symptoms for a few months. Given that 26 million people worldwide have Alzheimer’s, and 106 million could be afflicted by 2050, any treatment that alters the course of the disease would quickly become a multi-billion-dollar drug.

You can read the entire article here.