It was announced earlier this week that Roche had failed for the second time to develop a successful Alzheimer's drug.

Roche's 'high risk' failure has industry circling the wagons on future of Alzheimer's research

Another failure of an amyloid medicine for Alzheimer's disease has companies, analysts and patient advocacy groups circling the wagons to once again defend the theory and the future of research into the devastating neurological disorder.

The theory that reducing or preventing amyloid plaques in the brain can slow cognitive decline has time and time again failed in the clinic…

Roche has added a second failure in Alzheimer's to its tab this year, this time for gantenerumab, which did not improve the rate of cognitive and functional decline in two phase 3 clinical trials from the Graduate program. This follows the June disclosure that crenezumab had failed in a study of pre-symptomatic Alzheimer's patients.

Roche CEO Severin Schwan called gantenerumab "a high-risk project" when reporting second-quarter earnings in July, and suggested that the company "plan for a situation where it doesn't come through."

GlobalData Senior Neurology Analyst Pippa Salter called the gantenerumab failure surprising, particularly that the med also did not seem to clear amyloid plaques as much as expected. She doesn't see a path forward for the therapy.

"Its failure will be a significant blow to Roche, which had gambled on continued development of the product despite a previous phase 3 failure in 2014," Salter said in a Tuesday note. (Full article.)