Biotech Strategy Blog

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Posts tagged ‘Alzheimer’s Disease’

A personal perspective on Alzheimer’s: my mother doesn’t dance anymore

My mother has Alzheimer’s disease – I first suspected some form of dementia when her friends told me that she didn’t dance anymore.  Of course she insisted she did, but it was clear she had “forgotten” the steps in a way that was beyond the forgetfulness of getting older.

Winter in Malta 300x225 A personal perspective on Alzheimer’s: my mother doesn’t dance anymoreAs a European snow bird she would travel to Malta each year to escape the damp, grey English winters.  One year when I visited her in Malta, I noticed when she went up to the hotel dinner buffet, she could not “remember” where to return to.

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ARVO 2011 Using the eye as a window into the brain

Due to the pressure of other commitments, I only had the pleasure of attending the annual meeting of the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) for two days, but one of my key take home messages from the meeting is how we can use the eye as a window into the brain.  This is particularly relevant to Alzheimer’s research.

ARVO researchers at a lunchtime workshop that I attended asked the question of what can we learn from shared disease mechanisms in age-related macular degeneration (AMD), Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Glaucoma to devise therapies of the future?

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MRI may detect Alzheimer’s disease 10 years before symptoms show

Changes in brain structure, function and molecular processes occur several years before clinical symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) become apparent.

The big question then, is can you detect patients who are cognitively normal, but will go on to develop AD before they show symptoms, i.e. pre-symptomatic patients?  The answer is “Yes” according to results published in the April 19, 2011 issue of Neurology by Brad Dickerson and colleagues.

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10 warning signs of Alzheimer’s Disease

My theme for blog posts this week has been the diagnosis and detection of Alzheimer’s Disease, a therapeutic area I was first introduced to while working as a Global Project Director at the Canadian CRO, CroMedica before it was acquired by PRA. The then CEO of CroMedica, Erich Mohr Ph.D is now Chairman and CEO of MedGenesis Therapeutix Inc. in Victoria, BC.

This privately held biopharmaceutical company is working on developing new products for neurological diseases and the treatment of Parkinson’s Disease, Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) and Intractable Epilepsy. I have added MedGenesis to my list of emerging biotechnology companies to watch, and look forward to writing further as their pipeline develops.

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Aß40 Oligomers are a potential biomarker for diagnosis of Alzheimer’s before amyloid plaque develops

Following on from yesterday’s blog post about Lilly’s florebetapir,  a recent paper published in PLoS One (open access) describes how Aß40 Oligomers have potential as a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease (AD), prior to the development of amyloid plaque.

Thanks to BayBio for giving me the idea for this post when they mentioned it in their news about member & partner, Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics in Emeryville, CA.

Alzheimer’s disease is an important target therapeutic area for the biotechnology industry.  According to the Alzheimer’s Association, one in eight people aged 65 and older in the United States have Alzheimer’s disease (5.1 million). By 2030, the prevalence will have increased by approximately 50%, when an estimated 7.7 million will have the disease.

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