At a recent meeting on “Research priorities for preventing and treating Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias” (ADRD), convened by the National Academies, one consensus priority on ADRD research was that there needs to be more of it at every stage. Several speakers presented stark numbers on the relative volume of research in cancer and neurodegeneration. Research output, measured in peer-reviewed papers, for dementia is estimated to be around 10,000 papers annually, compared to 150,000 for cancer, while AD clinical trials are also few and far between compared to cancer trials. This final installment of BioWorld’s series on Alzheimer’s explores some of the reasons for this discrepancy along with the latest advances and ongoing efforts to accelerate research and drug development in the field.