RESEARCH AND SCIENCE

According to a January 30, 2020 BioSpace article, the NIH granted $4.8 million to the Gladstone Institutes to focus on the connection between ApoE4 and Alzheimer’s disease. The hope is to eventually use CRISPR gene editing to reverse negative effects of ApoE4. “Our work suggests that these ApoE4 fragments are toxic to neurons and cause sweeping changes to the collection of proteins expressed within a neuron. We suspect that their toxicity may underlie much of the neurodegeneration seen in Alzheimer’s disease,” said Gladstone Institutes’ President Emeritus Robert Mahley.

ALZ TECH

A January 30, 2020 Being Patient article spotlighted artificial intelligence (AI) which can accurately predict the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Canadian researchers reviewed blood and brain samples and found the the AI “strongly predicted” the severity of the disease. “This test could one day be used by doctors to evaluate patients and prescribe therapies tailored to their needs. It could also be used in clinical trials to categorize patients and better determine how experimental drugs impact their predicted disease progression,” said study author Yasser Iturria-Medina.

CLINICAL TRIAL SPOTLIGHT

A January 28, 2020 Yahoo! Finance article reported that Alector initiated the Phase 1b portion of its INTERCEPT clinical study of the monoclonal antibody AL003 for the treatment of mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. The drug blocks the inhibitory function of SIGLEC 3, an immune receptor tied to AD. “We are encouraged by the long-lasting target engagement that AL003 displayed with a blood-based biomarker even at low doses in these healthy volunteers. We look forward to evaluating AL003 in Alzheimer’s disease patients in the Phase 1b study,” said Robert Paul, MD, PhD.

MUST LISTEN

Listen to This Is Your Brain's "What You Can Do to Prevent Alzheimer's" podcast, as Dr. Phil Stieg talks with Dr. Richard Isaacson of the Alzheimer’s Prevention Clinic at Weill Cornell Medicine. Dr. Isaacson shares results from his groundbreaking clinical trial on personalized prevention plans to prevent and lower the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.