The first disease-modifying treatments have reached Europe, a next generation of drugs, delivery methods and blood tests is already in clinical trials
When the first disease-modifying Alzheimer’s drugs reached the European market in 2025, many biomarker-tested Czech patients were ready to use them. Amyloid PET scanning, a brain scan that detects the amyloid plaques that define Alzheimer’s and now decides who can receive the new drugs, is reimbursed across the country and available in every region.
Katerina Sheardova, scientific director of the Czech Brain Aging Study, a long-running study of memory and ageing, told a recent cross-country policy dialogue on Alzheimer’s care that many patients are “already biomarker phenotyped” and waiting for the therapy. The treatment is now approved, she said, and the clinic is preparing to start.
A system built for early diagnosis
Sheardova’s team founded the study in 2011, modelled on the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, a large US population study that has tracked memory and ageing in Olmsted County, Minnesota, since 2004. Getting the right patients through the door took a national campaign aimed at GPs, the public and the media, which brought more people in at early stages.
