-We move now to this month's "Your Brain Health Matters."

Out now is the 10th Annual Alzheimer's Drug Development Pipeline Report.

It comes from noted Alzheimer's Clinician Scientist Dr.

Jeffrey Cummings with the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV.

We spoke with him just days before he released the report, which he refers to as the "circle of hope."

-The circle of hope is a summary figure of all of the drugs that are currently in trials for Alzheimer's disease.

There are 192 trials this year testing 158 drugs.

So there is a very robust pipeline of drugs that are being tested to see if we can affect all different types of Alzheimer's disease symptoms.

And what is really increasing in the pipeline are the drugs that address inflammation in the brain, because just as you get a knee injury and it swells up and gets inflamed, the Alzheimer process in the brain causes inflammation to occur.

And we think that that makes the disease worse.

So the largest category of drugs in the pipeline this year, 28 drugs, address inflammation in the brain.

And, importantly, every one of them has a different way of affecting inflammation, so we're going to learn what is the best way, what is the best drug to be able to interfere in the inflammatory process.

-What was the other drug we were talking about that, as I got here, you found out it got FDA approval?

(Dr.

Jeff Cummings) Yes.

One of the most important symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, because it is so disabling to the patient and to the caregiver, is agitation.

And today, a new drug was approved for the treatment of agitation in Alzheimer's disease.

It's called Auvelity.

It is already approved and on the market for the treatment of depression, and it was realized that the chemistry of this drug suggested that it might also be useful for agitation.

There is already one other drug on the market for the treatment of agitation.

So this is not the first drug, but it is a totally different class of drugs.

And doctors and patients need alternatives, so we're thrilled that this new drug was approved today.

-When someone sees the headline that your new publication has come out and they say, Well, did they find a cure?

How do you respond to that and sustain hope?

-The reason that our work is called the "circle of hope" is because physicians and patients and caregivers can look at that circle and see every drug that's in clinical trials, and they see that there are at least 158 companies that each have a drug that is really working to try to find an answer for Alzheimer's disease.

And the progress is likely to be incremental.

The first drugs produce a 30% slowing.

Well, let's combine that with something else and see, can we get that to 50% slowing?

Could we increase it to 75% slowing?

And eventually, could we arrest the disease?

-And Dr.

Cummings says he'd like to see even more clinical trials, but a lack of volunteers is preventing that.