USA2 SPOTLIGHT

Our next Alzheimer's Talks will be on Friday, April 17th from 3 to 4 p.m. ET and feature Greg O'Brien. Greg is the author of On Pluto: Inside the Mind of Alzheimer's, and you may have heard him on NPR's All Things Considered or in webisodes about his life produced by USAgainstAlzheimer's. Sign up here.

MUST READS

An April 4, 2015 The Washington Post article reported on the efforts of tech industry leaders to improve lifespan including PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel. According to the article, “Thiel’s disdain for the status quo is clear in the manifesto for Breakout Labs, the grant-making group he set up through his foundation. It laments that scientists with bold ideas have been left out in the cold and promises to change that. “We want to jailbreak them from existing research institutions and set them free,” it says. In an interview, Thiel said the problem with the grant-making processes at NIH, the National Science Foundation and other major funders of research is that they are “consensus-oriented.” For Thiel, death is the “great enemy” of humankind. He said that in the past 25 years the pace of innovation in the biomedical realm has been demoralizing. “Nixon declared war on cancer in 1971, and there has been frustratingly slow progress,” he said. “One third of people age 85 and older have Alzheimer’s or dementia, and we’re not even motivated to start a war on Alzheimer’s. At the end of the day, we need to do more.” Thiel’s philanthropic investments in aging grew out of a series of late-night conversations with a friend, author Sonia Arrison. Her book “100 Plus,” a national bestseller, lays out a future where living longer is the new norm.” Read a Washington Post Q&A with Peter Thiel here. 

An April 3, 2015 The Washington Post article reported on the efforts of ALS patient advocates to press the FDA for “quick access” to a new treatments. According to the article, “The only drug available for the disease, approved two decades ago, typically extends life just a few months. Then in the fall, a small California biotech company named Genervon began extolling the benefits of GM604, its new ALS drug. In an early-stage trial with 12 patients, the results were “statistically significant,” “very robust” and “dramatic,” the company said in news releases. Such enthusiastic pronouncements are unusual for such a small trial. In February, Genervon took an even bolder step: It applied to the Food and Drug Administration for “accelerated approval,” which allows promising treatments for serious or life-threatening diseases to bypass costly, large-scale efficacy trials and go directly to market. ALS patients responded by pleading with the FDA, in emotional videos and e-mails, to grant broad access to the experimental drug. Online forums lit up, and a Change.org petition calling for rapid approval attracted more than a half-million signatures.”

An April 4, 2015 The Sacramento Bee article reported on worries over the price of speciality drugs. According to the article, “Medical advances are expected to produce a series of blockbuster drugs in the coming years to treat cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other severe and commonplace afflictions. Patient advocates worry that drugmakers will charge sky-high prices for each new drug while their patents exclude competitors…An unusual coalition of patient advocates and health plans, groups often at odds, are calling for greater transparency in drug pricing. They want to know why the drugs cost so much in the United States when in other parts of the world – including Europe, Canada and Egypt – Sovaldi and Harvoni are sold for a fraction of the price…Medicines to treat rare conditions, called “orphan drugs,” for years have been priced high to recoup the expense of developing a drug for a relatively small number of patients. But until Sovaldi, it was unheard of for a drug aimed at a commonplace disease to cost so much, critics said.”

OPINION

An April 4, 2015 The Vancouver Sun opinion piece by Dan Levitt highlighted the importance of technology to keeping seniors safe. According to the article, “The gerontechnology sector has introduced a number of very exciting developments. Shoes and insoles with GPS built into them provide peace of mind to family members taking care of relatives with Alzheimer’s disease. With a downloadable app, they can track them using the GPS or get an alert if the person wanders out of a pre-set safe zone…While the robots with artificial intelligence attract the imagination of forward-thinking computer scientists, no technology can replace human interactions. We don’t need a social psychologist to tell us that family and friends who are connected and concerned about a senior’s well-being stretch out independence, redefining our perception of old age. The technology is out there. We just need to apply it to seniors’ settings, thereby supporting independence, creating connections, and providing piece of mind. As gerontechnology becomes more available, the quality of life improvements will have groundbreaking impacts into the later stages of aging.” Dan Levitt is executive director of Tabor Village and adjunct professor in the gerontology department at Simon Fraser University.

An April 3, 2015 Forbes opinion piece by Doug Schoen underscored the need to protect biologic data to sustain medical innovation. According to Schoen, “Biologic data protections serve to ensure that when medical innovators invent new products—that is, invent new lifesaving medicines—they will retain the exclusive rights to sell those medicines. This is necessary to offset the enormous costs of research and development for these products. Weakening biologic data protection puts lives at risk. Currently, pharmaceutical companies are working to develop products that attack cancers, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and every other ailment one can think of. Indeed, there are over 800 medicines dedicated to treating cancers alone in development.”

An April 3, 2015 The Hill opinion piece by Dr. Kenneth Thorpe called on congress to listen to patients and protect medical innovation. According to Dr. Thorpe, “Finally, new medications and treatments mean that people all over the world are living longer and healthier lives. But, of course, there still aren’t needed treatments for many of the deadly and debilitating diseases around us. From Alzheimer’s disease to many forms of cancer, we are thankfully seeing progress, but we still have a long way to go. It is up to Congress to make sure medical and pharmaceutical innovation and research are encouraged –  that research funding is not cut, that the landscape is in place to protect discoveries, and that when new treatments come to market, patients can access them. Each day I am encouraged by the strength and resolve of many patients who not only fight hard in their own health battles but are brave enough to take a stand for what they believe is right. Some of these patients are coming to Washington later in the month. Lawmakers should listen to their voices.” Thorpe is chairman of the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease and chair of Health Policy and Management at Emory University.

NEWS YOU CAN USE 

An April 6, 2015 Metro UK article reported on research that suggests that ordering your steak rare might reduce your risk of dementia. According to the article, “Scientists have reportedly discovered that compounds known as ‘glycotoxins’, which form when we brown or blacken certain foods, may actually increase the risk of age-related dementia. So when it comes to ordering your steak, it might actually be advisable to have it rare. The new discovery is based on findings by researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine in the US, who found that mice raised on a diet rich in glycotoxins were more likely to develop dementia-like cognitive and movement problems than mice who were led a low-glycotoxin diet.”