Remembering Bruce Albala, 70, Leader in BACE Inhibitor Development
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Scientists in industry and academia were shocked and saddened to hear of the sudden passing of Bruce Albala. Albala died in Greece on October 16 while celebrating his 40th wedding anniversary with his wife. “The AD community, and especially BACE researchers, will miss his contagious enthusiasm, expertise, and dedication to patients,” wrote Matthew Kennedy, Merck & Co. Inc, Rahway, New Jersey.
“Bruce had a brilliant career in both academia and industry and left an indelible mark on the Alzheimer’s disease drug development landscape,” noted Robert Vassar, Northwestern University, Chicago (comment below).
Bruce Alabala
Albala will be particularly remembered for his role in the development of β-secretase inhibitors. He led the BACE program at Eisai, guiding its lead small molecule, elenbecestat, to two large Phase 3 clinical trials beginning in 2016. The drug slightly reduced amyloid burden in people in early stages of the disease, but it did not improve cognition. Unlike other BACE inhibitors being tested around the same at Merck, Janssen/Shionogi, and Novartis, elenbecestat did not cause cognitive decline, a side effect that scuppered development of verubecestat, atabecestat, and umibecestat. Ultimately, Eisai, too, cancelled its BACE program.
Albala was a fixture at BACE conferences, where his level-headed, pragmatic analyses were well received. He continued to champion BACE inhibitors, looking for ways to understand and mitigate the cognitive loss they caused. “Bruce was a strong advocate in favor of new BACE inhibitor prevention trials with lower, safer doses,” wrote Stefan Lichtenthaler, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Munich (comment below).
Albala left industry for academia in 2019, becoming associate dean of innovation and clinical trials at the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine. There, he worked to improve the efficiency and outcome measures for AD clinical trials. “His wide experience, his passion for science and beyond, and his strong voice for the BACE field will be greatly missed,” wrote Lichtenthaler.—Tom Fagan
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German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE)
I am saddened by the sudden and much too early death of Bruce Albala. Bruce was an excellent scientist, a great colleague, a good friend, and a leading scientist in the development of BACE inhibitors for Alzheimer’s disease. Working with Eisai, Bruce was in charge of the development of elenbecestat. This drug was the only BACE inhibitor tested in advanced clinical AD trials that did not induce the cognitive worsening side effect that led to the discontinuation of other BACE inhibitor trials.
Bruce was a strong voice in the BACE field. He enjoyed scientific discussion and had a great ability to engage the audience in public debate, including at the international BACE conferences in 2013 and 2016 near Munich. After his move to academia in 2019, Bruce provided his experience from industry to help a group of clinicians and scientists from academia and industry to critically evaluate the causes of the cognitive worsening side effect of the BACE inhibitors and to find ways to prevent this worsening. Bruce was a strong advocate in favor of new BACE inhibitor prevention trials with lower, safer doses.
Bruce was also a great friend, with whom I shared not only the love for science and specifically for BACE1, but also the passion for good food and travel, which often brought him to Europe. Last year, following the AAIC meeting in Amsterdam, he went—together with his wife—for a cultural river cruise along the river Rhine starting in the Netherlands and going all the way to Germany. Afterwards, Bruce told me how much he enjoyed the trip, including tasting some fine wines.
His wide experience, his passion for science and beyond, and his strong voice for the BACE field are greatly missed!
Eisai Limited
Eisai Limited
It was with shock and incredible sadness that colleagues at Eisai received the news that Bruce Albala had passed away. Bruce was a senior member of the neurology clinical development department at Eisai from 2010 to 2019, where he led the development of elenbecestat, an oral BACE inhibitor, for the treatment of early Alzheimer’s disease.
Bruce was a special individual: He was exuberant, full of life, warm, and naturally funny, and that enabled him to build a close-knit team with colleagues in the U.S., U.K., and Japan. Bruce was very intelligent and smart. This was evident through his interactions at various levels internally at Eisai, with colleagues externally, and with scientists in the Alzheimer’s disease research area. Under his leadership the elenbecestat Phase 3 program, MissionAD, enrolled over 2,200 early AD participants in 430 clinical sites in approximately 30 different countries, and the field still continues to learn from that program. Bruce’s passion and drive filtered into the team around him. He was a natural teacher, generous with his time and willing to share his extensive experience with those around him. He had an analogy (often wickedly humorous!) ready to go for nearly every occasion. Bruce was missed by his Eisai clinical development colleagues when he left to move to Southern California.
One of Bruce’s often-used phrases was to describe himself as a “cynical, pessimistic New Yorker!” We will deeply miss our dear “cynical, pessimistic New Yorker” as a leader in the field, a colleague, a mentor, and a friend. We send our heartfelt condolences to his wife, children, grandchildren, mother, sister, wider family, friends and colleagues.
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Bruce had a brilliant career in both academia and industry and left an indelible mark on the Alzheimer’s disease drug development landscape. He led drug development efforts in several companies, most notably at Eisai, where he directed their BACE inhibitor clinical trial program. Bruce had a gift for cutting through the chaff and getting to the heart of a matter. He also had a keen New York sense of humor and loved life. He will be dearly missed by all who knew him.
Cogstate
I miss Bruce Albala. Bruce’s scientific life was dedicated to the development of a drug treatment for Alzheimer's disease. He had begun in the industry before me and would tell me tales of his life before donepezil. He had worked in companies whose names were unfamiliar to me and on drugs that I did not know. His and my paths crossed when he was working at Eisai. By the time we met, he had already spent many years of science seeking to understand how treatment with cholinesterase inhibitors could be optimized in people with dementia. His experience with donepezil, with Alzheimer’s disease, and the vicissitudes of clinical trials provided a strong foundation for studies of the new disease-modifying therapies that were emerging. As has been stated here, Bruce was the driving force of the Eisai Elenbecestat program.
I admired Bruce. He had big opinions, big ideas, and big goals. There was no doubt about what these were, as he would express them to us in his loud voice. Bruce also had big expectations of you. I improved as a clinical trial scientist by trying to meet his expectations. He was possessed of boundless energy and motivation. His clinical trials science was clever, honest, and pragmatic. He was always interested in new ideas for clinical trial design and execution, and he was a seer of their strengths and limitations. Where he could not see, he would experiment. You got to love that!
Bruce was also delightful in informal settings. In these settings you saw the man, full of humor, generosity, and curiosity. I hope I can achieve some of things he did, and as I continue to play my small part in wrestling this terrible disease into submission, I will honor Bruce by seeking to emulate his qualities as a person and as a scientist.
UC Irvine Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders
University of California, Irvine
The UC Irvine ADRC was shocked and saddened by the passing of Dr. Bruce Albala. Dr. Albala brought his unique insights to UC Irvine in 2019 and was a frequent attendee at seminars and other activities held by the ADRC, while devoting most of his energy to the School of Medicine clinical trials programs. Our thoughts are with his family, particularly his wife of 40 years, Bernadette Boden-Albala, founding dean of the UC Irvine Joe C. Wen School of Population & Public Health.
CognitionMetrics, LLC
I was so looking forward to seeing Bruce at CTAD in Madrid this year. I was hoping we could fit in our traditional dinner, with his loving wife, Bernadette, and our friend Paul Maruff. I had questions I wanted to ask him--Bruce had accumulated much wisdom on topics ranging from Alzheimer's disease measurement, clinical trials design and operations, new insights on mechanisms of action and biomarkers, regulatory interactions, not to mention lovely anecdotes about colleagues past and present. It was always good to get to spend time with Bruce. He will be missed by his many friends and colleagues.
His family are top of mind in our thoughts as well. I recall a meeting at the Eisai offices in New Jersey, several of us around a conference table working on a problem with the Elenbecestat trial when his phone rang. His face lit up and he abruptly excused himself. When he (unapologetically) returned, he told us it was his daughter, with some personal news. As devoted as he was to his work, Bruce's adoration of his family was never a secret. His beaming smile was always present when he spoke of them. We wish them peace and some comfort in the memories he left, and in the knowledge of his great hopes for their future.
San Francisco Veterans Affairs Medical Center
Bruce Albala was an amazing person, a “force of nature.”
As the Principal Investigator of ADNI, I first came to know Bruce when he was the Eisai representative to the ADNI Private Partner Scientific Board (PPSB). Bruce was chairing the Cognitive Endpoints Working Group during ADNI2 and we both shared an interest in using online digital neuropsychological assessments for research and clinical trials. Bruce scheduled Zoom meetings with a number of companies offering computerized testing available on the internet. The committee chose Cogstate for a pilot study during ADNI2 and then we included Cogstate for all participants in ADNI 3. Bruce spearheaded much of this, making a huge contribution to our project.
When we started planning for ADNI 4 (about four to five years ago) again Bruce took responsibility for identifying various companies and academic labs developing online tests. Very early he became interested in the use of speech and voice, identifying a number of academic groups and companies doing good work in this area. During a trip to London, he visited Novoic, and was very enthusiastic about their Storyteller instrument. This ultimately led to ADNI working closely with Novoic. After Bruce left Eisai and moved to UC Irvine he continued to work with the ADNI Digital assessment, and joined our monthly Executive Committee calls.
Bruce always had fresh ideas, sometimes quite “out of the box,” which I always greatly appreciated. His many years of experience in the pharmaceutical industry, together with a background in neuropsychology and an appreciation for the finer points of data analysis, made him a major contributor to ADNI’s success. We are just finishing up manuscript on our Cogstate experience, and Bruce will be on the author line.
We all liked Bruce very much, he was an extremely engaging, high-spirited person. We both shared a background coming from York City, me from Brooklyn and he from Queens. We will all miss him very much.
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