USA2 SPOTLIGHT 

A January 6, 2017 Washingtonian article profiled UsAgainstAlzheimer’s co-founders George and Trish Vradenburg - the magazine named them 2016 Washingtonians of the Year. According to the profile, “The Vradenburgs are cofounders of UsAgainstAlzheimers, which fights to accelerate research into drugs and therapies with the goal of ending Alzheimer’s by 2020. In forging coalitions with groups representing women, African-Americans, Latinos, clergy, researchers, and caregivers, it advocates for more studies and better treatment options…Thanks to the Vradenburgs, more celebrities and lawmakers, such as Senator Tim Kaine and House speaker Paul Ryan, have been speaking out about the toll on their families.”

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A January 6, 2017 MedicalExpress.com article reported that “A team of researchers at Baylor College of Medicine has developed a family-based association test that improves the detection in families of rare disease-causing variants of genes involved in complex conditions such as Alzheimer’s.”

A January 5, 2017 The Scientific American article reported that “new Alzheimer’s treatments offer hope despite recent drug failures.” According to Howard Fillit, executive director of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), “There's a lot of reason for hope. There are over 130 different clinical trials going on now. I remember the days when there were none. We have had many failures. But I think one of the big advances that is creating hope is that we know how to do clinical trials better now. In a study that is being conducted by Biogen, everyone who was recruited into that study actually had Alzheimer's disease, for the first time.”

A January 5, 2016 Science Daily article reported that “Treatment with an inhibitor of 12/15-lipoxygenase, an enzyme elevated in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), reverses cognitive decline and neuropathology in an AD mouse model, reports a new study.”

A January 5, 2017 Montreal Gazette article highlighted IBM’s annual list of five innovations that “will change our lives within five years.” According to the article, “Today, IBM says takes only about 300 words to predict the probability that a patient suffers from psychosis. For tomorrow, it is working on applying the same techniques, with the addition of video analysis, to let cognitive computing pinpoint signs of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease, PTSD, autism and ADHD.”