USA2 SPOTLIGHT

In Case You Missed It: An April 29, 2015 Huffington Post blog post by USAgainstAlzheimer’s Chairman George Vradenburg highlighted the power of big data to fight Alzheimer’s. According to Vradenburg, “Modern technology now makes it possible to collect so-called Big Data on entire populations, opening up new possibilities for AD research. Today, genetic, imaging and even sensor data can be collected on massive numbers of people with strong privacy and security protections. Unlike the traditional research approach that relies on one or a small number of labs' work on data to publish a limited set of findings months or years later, big data allows a global network of researchers to gain access to each other and to citizen-generated data for collaborative and patient-focused research. The challenge before us is to mine all this data to unearth the clues to understand and then beat Alzheimer's. And soon…Hope is on the horizon, as we can see a future where privacy-protected biomedical data can be shared to advance scientific research across a global community of diverse experts. Today in the UK, there is the 2 million volunteer Dementia Project. In the US, it's President Obama's recently announced million person DNA sequencing initiative. In business, its Apple's recent announcement of ResearchKit which will leverage the world's 700 million iPhone users to collect and analyze new types of data in asthma, breast cancer, diabetes and Parkinson's Disease. AD#1 exposed the impediments that limit the full potential of Big Data to address medicine's most taxing unmet medical needs. Let's think of what we can do for those at risk for Alzheimer's and let loose the innovation promised by 21st century citizen science.”

MUST READS

A May 2, 2015 The Hill article reported on the growing momentum to boost medical research. According to the article, “An unusual coalition of Democrats and conservative Republicans is calling for increased funding for the National Institutes of Health, but the lawmakers must contend with spending caps known as the sequester…After years of mostly flat funding that NIH says has left the agency under-resourced, supporters hope a breakthrough could be getting closer. Prominent Republicans like former Speaker Newt Gingrich and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor have both called for increasing NIH funding in the past month…The NIH budget has stayed mostly flat since 2003, and has not kept up with inflation. Dr. Francis Collins, NIH director, says that $1 billion would allow NIH to give 1,200 more grants. “We have seen over the course of the last 12 years a significant diminution in NIH’s ability to do research across the board,” Collins told a Senate hearing last week. “Our most important resource, the people doing the work, are clearly pretty stressed at the moment.” But the agency’s officials have cheered the Cures bill. “Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” Kathy Hudson, an NIH deputy director, told the House hearing on the Cures bill Thursday. “The research community is ecstatic.” “I think we’re going from a very dreary phase of biomedical research to a much brighter phase,” she said.”

A May 1, 2015 Seattle Times opinion piece by Dr. John Aitchison underscored the need to invest in NIH to drive medical breakthroughs. According to Aitchison, “While technology and scientific understanding has reached the point where researchers are on the cusp of major scientific breakthroughs, NIH funding has stagnated, leaving 86 percent of research projects unfunded and jeopardizing lifesaving scientific discoveries. Now is the time to increase investment in research, not pare it back…Scientists alone can’t end disease. Public support is crucial in advancing the science to eliminate infectious diseases, to cure cancer, to stop heart disease and to end countless other global health atrocities.” John Aitchison is scientific director at the Center for Infectious Disease Research, the largest nonprofit in the world focused solely on infectious disease research.

A May 1, 2015 R&D Mag article reported that “nearly two-thirds of older adults were willing to undergo telephone screening for dementia, according to a new study from the the Indiana University Center for Aging Research and the Regenstrief Institute.” According to the article, “The researchers found that the two most significant predictors of willingness to be screened by phone were belief in benefits of early knowledge of cognitive decline and having a friend or relative with Alzheimer's disease…In 2013 the United States Preventive Services Task Force concluded that the evidence to routinely screen for dementia in primary care is insufficient due to a lack of studies evaluating the risks, benefits and patient perspectives of the value of dementia screening.”

CARE

A May 1, 2015 The Atlantic article highlighted challenges with seniors living at dying at home as they age. According to the article, “To avoid ending up in situations like Wilson’s, seniors often move to assisted-living communities and to nursing homes, shepherded there by their worried children. This is a pricey proposition—assisted living costs, on average, $3,000 a month, and some Continuing Care Retirement Communities require seniors to cough up a hefty down payment, say $250,000, for their apartment (which sometimes is refunded to heirs upon the resident’s death). But the economics of this aren’t going to work for much longer. By 2050, one-fifth of the total U.S. population—about 88 million people—will be 65 and older. Many of them won’t have saved enough money for an assisted living or retirement community. Some low-income seniors may be able to get Medicaid to pay for nursing home costs, but states and local government budgets will have a hard time handling the crunch, and besides, many of the places that take Medicaid are under-staffed and run-down. Many aging people will not find them to their liking.”

RESEARCH, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY 

A May 3, 2015 Pri.org article reported on Duke University Professor Allen Roses’ challenges to conventional Alzheimer’s research orthodoxy. According to the article, “Throughout his career, Duke University neurology professor Allen Roses has challenged what for decades has been the prevailing orthodoxy in Alzheimer’s research: Namely, the “amyloid hypothesis,” which suggests that a protein called beta-amyloid clogs up the brain, killing neurons and causing the dementia associated with Alzheimer’s disease. “Beta-amyloid is the result [of Alzheimer’s], rather than a cause,” he says. For more than 20 years, Roses, 72, has pursued a hunch that dementia in Alzheimer’s patients stems from an inability in the brain to metabolize energy sources, such as glucose and oxygen. The trigger, he argues, is variations in two genes — ApoE and TOMM40 — which ultimately inhibit mitochondria from supplying energy to neurons, causing them to die. A growing body of published literature supports his theory, Roses says, but by and large, he “has been totally ignored” by the field.”

An April 1, 2015 NIH statement highlighted recommendations to transform Alzheimer’s disease research. According to the statement, “Developed at the recent Alzheimer’s Disease Research Summit 2015: Path to Treatment and Prevention, the highly anticipated recommendations provide the wider Alzheimer’s research community with a strategy for speeding the development of effective interventions for Alzheimer’s and related dementias. These recommendations call for a change in how the academic, biopharmaceutical and government sectors participating in Alzheimer’s research and therapy generate, share and use knowledge to propel the development of critically needed therapies.” Read the recommendations here.

GLOBAL PERSPECTIVES 

A May 2, 2015 ABC News article (Australia) reported that dementia advocates have warned that Australia is not equipped to deal with its growing “tsunami” of Alzheimer’s cases. According to the article, “Dementia affects 340,000 Australians, with 25,000 of them under the age of 65 and the numbers are set to increase by a third in less than 10 years. Yet despite a delayed retirement age of 70 by the year 2035, there is no national blueprint to cope with the increasing concern…Clinical neuropsychologist Dr Nicola Gates said she was concerned that while much had been done overseas in countries like the UK and Canada to prepare for the advance, the conversation between key players nationally had not even started yet here in Australia.”