October 13, 2017

Today’s Top Alzheimer’s News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT

An October 12, 2017 AP News article spotlighted the new film, “My Mom and the Girl,” starting Valerie Harper about a woman with Alzheimer’s disease. It is directed and produced by Susie Singer Carter, who plays opposite Harper in the story drawn from the filmmaker’s experience with her own mother, Norma Holzer. Carter said her mother’s story needed to be told, but “I resisted it for quite a while. I would tell anecdotes about my mom and people would say, ‘You have to do a movie, you have to write that.’” The film relied on crowdfunding and support from UsAgainstAlzheimer’s.


A Research!America release highlighted their Capitol Hill briefing on October 5th, where Alzheimer’s disease experts discussed challenges and opportunities of translating laboratory discoveries into clinical practice. VeteransAgainstAlzheimers Founder and President Shawn Taylor highlighted AD’s devastating personal toll. Her father, mother and two grandparents all suffered from AD.  


MUST READS

An October 13, 2017 Radiology Business article focused on a research group at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania utilizing machine learning methods and large databases of imaging and clinical data to discover brain changes associated with aging and psychosis. They received two grants equaling $8.5 million from the National Institutes on Aging, National Institute of Mental Health and general office of the Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). 


According to an October 12, 2017 MIT News article, microglia, immune cells that clear away dead cells from the brain and help to maintain healthy neuronal wiring, have recently been implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, entangled with toxic amyloid beta plaques. “Right now, microglia are really in the spotlight for a number of neuro-system diseases, including Alzheimer’s, and also schizophrenia,” says MIT Professor Li-Huei Tsai.


INDUSTRY UPDATE

An October 13, 2017 Endpoints News article reported that Ionis Pharmaceuticals launched an early-stage tau drug study for Alzheimer’s. According to Senior VP of Research C. Frank Bennett, “In contrast to amyloid plaques that may begin to deposit in the brain for up to 20 years before the onset of AD, tau deposits are spatially and temporally associated with the brain regions where atrophy occurs and neurocognitive deficits originate.”