March 24, 2015

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT

A March 23, 2015 Alzheimer’s News Today article reported that “The Innovative Medicines Initiative (IMI) together with the Global Alzheimer’s Platform (GAP) recently announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement based on the common goal of accelerating the search for an Alzheimer’s disease therapy through the creation of a global, standing, trial-ready platform for Alzheimer’s drug development.” GAP is an initiative of CEOi and USAgainstAlzheimer’s. 


MUST READS

A March 24, 2015 Bloomberg article reported that new research from the Mayo Clinic has found that “the accumulation of dysfunctional tau protein is the real source of cognitive decline and memory loss seen in Alzheimer’s.” According to the article, “Biogen’s drug BIIB037, and several others in advanced development, focus instead on the buildup of different set of protein fragments, called beta amyloid. “Amyloid has a relationship with cognitive decline, but if you’re looking at both of them together, tau is the bad guy,” Melissa Murray, a neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic campus in Jacksonville, Florida, said in a telephone interview. The majority of research into the disease has focused on beta amyloid over the past 25 years, she said.”

A March 23, 2015 The Washington Post article reported that a new report from the Alzheimer’s Association finds that “less than half the people who have Alzheimer’s reported being told they had the dementia-causing disease.” According to the article, “A common reason for failure to disclose a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s was the perceived “stigma” of the disease and the reluctance to create additional emotional stress in a patient with a brain disease that progressive, incurable and ultimately fatal, the report says.” Also reported on by NPRThe Wall Street Journal, and NBC News among others.


AGING POLICY 

A March 23, 2015 Roll Call article reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is weighing expanding payments for end-of-life planning. According to the article, “Medicare officials may this year propose creating a new payment for time that doctors spend helping their patients plan for how they would confront terminal illness and rapid declines in health…Many doctors and lawmakers are pressing to incorporate end-of-life counseling into routine medical practice in the United States…Warner is likely to reintroduce a measure that he offered in the last session of Congress, a bill developed with Sen. Isakson, R-Ga., that would create a Medicare and Medicaid benefit for end-of-life planning. Speaking at the Institute of Medicine meeting Friday, Warner recalled how that even families with access to good medical information now struggle when confronting with terminal illnesses, as happened in his own mother’s fight with Alzheimer’s disease. After her initial diagnosis, his family didn’t discuss living wills and advanced care directives or what his mother wanted in her final years.”


INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT 

A March 23, 2015 St. Louis Business Journal article reported that “C2N Diagnostics LLC, founded by Drs. David Holtzman and Randall Bateman, will partner with Chicago-based AbbVie…to develop and commercialize a portfolio of anti-tau antibodies for the treatment of Alzheimer’s and other neurological disorders.”