USA2 SPOTLIGHT

A March 21, 2019 Alzforum article covered the GAP-Net Site Optimization Conference, sponsored by the Global Alzheimer’s Platform (GAP) Foundation, which included representatives from 61 academic and private clinical trial sites, who gathered to compare notes and exchange information on improving Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials. According to the article, “Three years ago, GAP Foundation cofounders George Vradenburg [UsAgainstAlzheimer’s Chairman] and John Dwyer conceived GAP-Net to re-engineer the painfully slow, inefficient processes and systems underpinning Alzheimer’s disease drug evaluation… They initially sought to boost web-based recruiting of research participants, promote new trial designs, and raise more funds for research.” GAP is an initiative of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s.

MUST READS

A March 25, 2019 Time Magazine article featured the story of Peter Wooding and his wife JoAnn. Peter, who has Alzheimer’s, was a participant in Biogen and Esai’s now discontinued aducanumab drug trial. The FDA had granted Fast Track designation and would have given the drug priority review. “It’s sort of like having the rug pulled out from under you,” said Peter. According to the article, “If the data show that the aducanumab did what it was supposed to do and reduced amyloid burden in the brain, but still did not affect people’s overall cognition, then that would call into question whether amyloid should remain such a dominant focus for treatment strategies.”

RESEARCH AND SCIENCE

A March 25, 2019 STAT News article referred to discussion surrounding a new study from Spain’s Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, which finds that the brain is capable of generating new neurons up to the ninth decade of life, and that old brains without dementia have much higher rates of neurogenesis than brains with Alzheimer’s disease. According to the article, “The marker called DCX does very poorly during tissue fixation, the step when minuscule slices from a donated brain are prepared for analysis. “If you go over about 12 hours of fixation time, the markers of new neurons disappear,” she [study lead María Llorens-Martín] said. “The new cells are there but we cannot detect them... We clearly demonstrated that if you go longer than 12 hours” of fixation time, “you lose the signal of neurogenesis,” Llorens-Martín said.”

A March 25, 2019 Medical Express article focused on the link between diabetes and Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. By comparing tau pathologies amongst people with normal glucose levels, with pre-diabetes and those with type 2 diabetes, researchers found that patients with untreated diabetes developed signs of AD 1.6 times faster than those without. “Among people with diabetes, the difference in their rate of developing the signs of dementia and Alzheimer's is clearly tied somehow to whether or not they are on medication for it,” said Daniel A. Nation from USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.

PROFILES IN COURAGE

Check-out “Jim's Joy of Life Parade.” Artist Jim Gray, who has dementia, painted his life story, with accompanying notes, after watching his father die from Alzheimer’s disease, and recognizing something was wrong with his own cognition. “The painted images are by Jim Gray. The stories are the shared recollections and compilations of friends and family, words spoken by Jim or written down in Jim’s own hand, finally gathered and organized by a grateful son…”