March 05, 2015

Today's Top Alzheimer's News

USA2 SPOTLIGHT

A March 4, 2015 USA Today Q&A with Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) highlighted the senator’s commitment to aging issues and Alzheimer’s. According to Senator Collins, “I have three major priorities: improving retirement security, investments in biomedical research targeting diseases that disproportionately affect older Americans like Alzheimer's and diabetes, and protecting seniors against financial exploitation and scams, which has a direct effect on retirement security.” Senator Susan Collins is a member of the WomenAgainstAlzheimer’s Honorary Congressional Committee. 

MUST READS

A March 1, 2015 ABC News article reported that Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) would spend an extra $5.8 billion in federal funding for medical research and Alzheimer’s. According to Senator Warren, “Think how many young researchers could have had their careers launched with that $5.8 billion--and think about the breakthroughs on Alzheimer's or autism or diabetes that they might have made.”

A March 4, 2015 NIH press release announced an NIH led “public-private partnership to transform and accelerate drug development achieved a significant milestone today with the launch of a new Alzheimer’s Big Data portal — including delivery of the first wave of data — for use by the research community.” According to the article, “The opening of the AMP-AD Knowledge Portal External Web Site Policy and release of the first wave of data will enable sharing and analyses of large and complex biomedical datasets. Researchers believe this approach will ramp up the development of predictive models of Alzheimer’s disease and enable the selection of novel targets that drive the changes in molecular networks leading to the clinical signs and symptoms of the disease.” Access the portal here.

RESEARCH, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY

A March 4, 2015 Drug Discovery & Development article reported that researchers at Harvard Medical School are “upending Alzheimer’s theory.” According to the article, “A study from Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital reveals for the first time exactly how mutations associated with the most common form of inherited Alzheimer’s disease produce the disorder’s devastating effects. Appearing in the March 4 issue of Neuron, the paper upends conventional thinking about the effects of Alzheimer’s-associated mutations in the presenilin genes and provides an explanation for the failure of drugs designed to block presenilin activity.”

A March 4, 2015 San Francisco Business Times article reported that Alzheimer’s startup Alkahest “landed a $37.5 million investment from Spanish drug maker Grifols S.A.” According to the article, “Alkahest, launched last year by Stanford professor Tony Wyss-Coray, is aimed at infusing Alzheimer's patients with plasma from young people. It is one of the first tenants in Johnson & Johnson's new biotech incubator in South San Francisco.”