The inaugural 2025 USC College of Pharmacy Discovery of the Year has been awarded to Joe Magagnoli, Tammy Cummings, and Scott Sutton of the Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Outcomes Sciences. Their research uncovered a novel association showing that nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors (NRTIs), antiviral drugs commonly used to treat hepatitis B and HIV, are associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Their discovery was selected through a vote of the college’s full professors from among more than 100 faculty publications in 2025.
It provides the first large-scale human evidence that common drugs used for hepatitis B and HIV are associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease ...
Using large-scale health care data, the team combined and analyzed records from the U.S. Veterans Health Administration spanning 24 years and other large databases to examine whether NRTI exposure influenced the later development of Alzheimer’s disease. Their findings point to an inflammatory mechanism, specifically inflammasome inhibition, suggesting both a biological explanation for the observed protection and a strong rationale for prospectively testing NRTIs and related inflammasome inhibitors in clinical trials.
“This study is significant because it provides the first large-scale human evidence that common drugs used for hepatitis B and HIV are associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and that this may be mediated through inflammatory mechanisms,” said Lorne Hofseth, associate dean of research.
The group’s paper, which has garnered widespread global media attention, was originally published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, in May 2025.