USA2 SPOTLIGHT

Upcoming Alzheimer's Talks! 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 15, 2015 The Guardian article highlighted Duke University’s latest research that suggests that “immune cells could be going rogue in the brain and contributing to the development of Alzheimer’s.” According to the article, “Experiments on mice showed cells that normally protect the brain beginning to consume a vital nutrient called arginine as they progressed towards a state similar to Alzheimer’s. By blocking this process with a drug, the team from Duke University in North Carolina were able to prevent the formation of plaques, which are the most visible indication of Alzheimer’s in the brain, and also halt memory loss in mice…The discovery is one of a number of significant developments lifting a sense of pessimism created by years of deadlock. Between 2002 and 2012, 99.6% of drugs studies aimed at preventing, curing or improving Alzheimer’s symptoms were either halted or discontinued. The failure of so many trials, at astronomical financial cost, sent researchers back to the drawing board. This reassessment is finally beginning to pay off as scientists drill down into the basic physiological causes of Alzheimer’s…Before a declaration that the study marks a firm step towards a drug that achieves the same effect in humans, however, it is worth noting that “Alzheimer’s mice” are not a perfect parallel for what happens in human brains. Normally, laboratory mice can be made to have plaques, but not the two other main features: loss of connections and death of brain cells. This means it can be easier to reverse memory loss in mice than in humans, where the neurons holding memories have physically vanished.” Also reported on by CBS News. 

OPINION

An April 15, 2015 Forbes opinion piece by David Shaywitz called for more cautious optimism when it comes to the promise of precision medicine. According to Shaywitz, “The core premise (central dogma?) of precision medicine – including both the White House’s initiative, as well as a range of other efforts – is that the integration of genetic information, EMR data, and rich dynamic phenotypic information will enable sophisticated patient segmentation, revealing biologically distinct subgroups and pointing the way to precisely targeted treatments…I (obviously) buy into the underlying precision medicine hypothesis deeply; I anticipate (and have argued) the integration of genetic and rich phenotypic data will produce novel, biologically-driven insights.  Moreover, I suspect that the lack of examples reflects the infancy of the field, rather than the fragility of the thesis. But, if only as a thought exercise, it’s worth at least considering what it would mean if the careful study of phenotype, and the resulting integration with genetic data doesn’t turn out to be as useful as we presently anticipate – what if the expected clinically informative, biologically-based subgroups don’t emerge? What would this say about the way we conceptualize disease – and the way we think about developing cures?”

RESEARCH, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

An April 16, 2015 ABC News radio segment (Australia) highlighted advances in developing an eye test for dementia and Alzheimer’s. According to the article, “Dementia researchers believe changes in the eyes might mirror the changes that occur in the brain with dementia. A conference in Perth today will hear how new developments in eye imaging technology are being used to detect dementia.”

An April 15, 2015 UT San Diego article reported that “In the past nine months, UC San Diego and the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla recruited three of the country’s top “big data” researchers from Google, MIT and the University of Colorado.” According to the article, “San Diego is quickly becoming the focal point of a nationwide effort to use high-speed computers and smart software to sift through mountains of biomedical data for clues about why people develop everything from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease.”

An April 15, 2015 Mashable article highlighted seven tech startups that are making an impact in preventative care including Neurotrack, an Alzheimer’s focused initiative. According to the article, “Alzheimer’s disease is the only one of the top 10 causes of death in America that cannot be prevented, cured or slowed, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, but early diagnosis of the disease could help facilitate drug testing and development. Neurotrack has developed a noninvasive, computer-based test that has the potential to diagnose Alzheimer’s patients three to six years before they show symptoms, thereby allowing pharmaceutical companies to better recruit patients for clinical trials. The company claims its technology will eventually be used as a screening test to help slow and possibly prevent the disease’s progression.”

An April 14, 2015 PharmaTimes article reported that “AstraZeneca has signed a five-year deal with PatientsLikeMe for access to the network’s 325,000-plus members, in an attempt to bring patient-centric evidence into the heart of drug discovery and development.” According to the article, “The drug giant said it intends to feed patient-reported data from PatientsLikeMe into medicine development, to boost outcomes across its main therapeutic areas, focusing on respiratory disease, lupus, diabetes and oncology in the first instance.”