April 18, 2014

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

The need to increase federal research funding, scientists clone cells from two adults, a photo gallery of Alzheimer's patients, and UC San Francisco's efforts to battle Alzheimer's through private-public partnerships (read more). 

Must reads

  • An April 18, 2014 Herald-Review opinion piece by Lee Hamilton called on the government to increase its investment in research. According to Hamilton, "The point is not that government investment in research and development is better or worse than private-sector investment, but that collaboration between government and industry puts us in a stronger position competitively than either sector acting alone. Both are needed to solve big problems.Which is why the cuts we’re seeing in federal R&D spending are so alarming. We live in an era of pervasive anti-government sentiment. There is no question, as I have argued many times before, that both Congress and the executive branch need to improve their game and learn how to become more effective and less wasteful of both time and money. But the importance of federal spending on research and development is undeniable. At a time when we as a nation face mounting economic challenges and a raft of eager business competitors, cutting investment in R&D, rather than expanding it, is foolhardy." Lee Hamilton is Director of the Center on Congress at Indiana University.
  • An April 17, 2014 The Wall Street Journal article reported that "Scientists for the first time have cloned cells from two adults to create early-stage embryos, and then derived tissue from those embryos that perfectly matched the DNA of the donors." According to the article, "The experiment represents another advance in the quest to make tissue in the laboratory that could treat a range of maladies, from heart attacks to Alzheimer's…The creation of the first early-stage human clones, using infant and fetal cells rather than those from adults, was reported last year. The new experiment, with a few tweaks, confirms that striking and controversial breakthrough and also shows the technique works on mature cells."
  • An April 17, 2014 USA Today article reported on the efforts of photographer Diane Beals, who lost her father a year ago, to capture portraits of patients struggling with Alzheimer's. According to the article, "She started capturing images for her Faces of Alzheimer's exhibit three years ago as her father, LeRoy Beals, struggled with losing some of his most basic memories…She spent three months snapping portraits of 45 residents at five memory care centers here where she said she got to know and love many of her subjects."
Research and science 
  • An April 17, 2014 UCSF News article reported on UC San Francisco's efforts to partner with the private sector to tackle neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. According to the article, "In the decades since his discovery, Prusiner – now director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (IND) at UCSF – has been committed to getting answers about prion diseases, and ultimately treatments and cures…But this month, Prusiner’s work got a huge boost from an exciting new collaboration between the IND and the Japan-based global pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd. It will focus on developing therapeutics and molecular diagnostics for multiple neurodegenerative diseases. “Alzheimer’s alone kills as many people every year as cancer does, but it only receives one-tenth of the funding that we dedicate to cancer research. This collaboration won’t fill that funding gap, but it will offer the tremendous value of Daiichi Sankyo’s scientific expertise to make progress on these diseases,” he said."
  • An April 16, 2014 UC Irvine News article reported that "A class of drugs developed to treat immune-related conditions and cancer – including one currently in clinical trials for glioblastoma and other tumors – eliminates neural inflammation associated with dementia-linked diseases and brain injuries, according to UC Irvine researchers."
USA2