✦ Alzheimer's: Kisunla & the Blood TestNarrow moat

Lilly's Alzheimer's franchise is really two bets stapled together. The drug — Kisunla, the amyloid-clearing antibody — showed growing benefit over three years of continued treatment in data presented in 2026, strengthening the case that earlier and longer treatment bends the disease's curve¹. The multiplier is diagnostic: Lilly's P-tau217 blood test performs comparably to amyloid PET scans at a fraction of the cost and hassle, and new data at the 2026 Alzheimer's conference extend it toward screening cognitively normal populations².

The arithmetic explains the excitement: seven million Americans have Alzheimer's, but diagnosis today requires specialists, scanners and months — a funnel so narrow that most patients arrive too late for an amyloid drug to help. A cheap blood test converts primary care into the funnel's mouth, and every early diagnosis is a potential decade-long Kisunla course. The risks remain the field's oldest: modest clinical effect sizes, ARIA safety monitoring, and payers skeptical of treating a disease by biomarker. Watch screening-based prevention trials and the blood test's reimbursement path — the frontier where treatment starts before symptoms is where this franchise gets large.