07 Dec 2001

Current Status of Emerging Therapies for Alzheimer's Disease-Sangram Sisodia, University of Chicago

Dr. Sangram Sisodia provided a summary and critique of the foregoing scientific presentations wherein he outlined the strengths and weaknesses of each of the approaches discussed at the symposium. A number of these points, as well as others made by the some of the >300 symposium participants are incorporated in the summaries above.

What Are the Next Steps? The Challenges of Transforming Laboratory Advances into Treatments for Patients-Christopher Clark, and Jason Karlawish, University of Pennsylvania

Finally, in a closing session to the symposium designed for attendance by scientists and clinicians as well as for the caregivers and families of AD patients, Drs. Chris Clark and Jason Karlawish concluded the symposium by summarizing the key elements involved in the conduct of human clinical trials of new AD therapies. They noted a number of unfinished tasks for the design of such trials including issues such as informed consent for trials involving subjects who may not be able to give consent themselves, but instead require surrogates for this, the importance of the "dyad" of patient and caregiver in judging the merits and efficacy of new drugs for AD, the need for better outcome measures for testing new drugs including better imaging strategies and reliable AD biomarkers that can be used in conjunction with clinical outcome measures to assess the response of the disease process to therapeutic interventions, and the types of patient populations most suitable for evaluating new AD therapies in a timely and informative manner.

However, it is notable that, in addition to the efforts of industry to carry out clinical trials of proprietary drugs for AD, the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health has established an infrastructure of AD Centers around the USA for this and a funding mechanism through the AD Clinical Studies program to conduct clinical trials of other potential therapies for AD (6). This presentation stimulated robust discussion and dialogue among all the participants on the prospects of translating laboratory advances in AD research into effective therapies for AD patients. Acknowledgements The codirectors of CNDR who organized this symposium kindly acknowledge a grant from Nastech Pharmaceutical Co., Inc., to support this meeting and the publications of the proceedings of the meeting in a future issue of the journal Neurobiology of Aging, as well as generous support for the meeting from Janssen Pharmaceutica. Other support came from the Memory Disorder Clinic, the Institute on Aging and the AD Center Core at Penn as well as from all of the members of CNDR, but especially Ms. Gayle Viale, who provided key design, logistical and administrative support. In addition, the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health, and the Oxford Foundation made the symposium possible. Dr. V.M.-Y. Lee is the recipient of the John H. Ware 3rd Chair for Alzheimer's Disease Research. Additional information on AD and related neurodegenerative diseases can be obtained at ,the CNDR website . Finally, all of the speakers are thanked for their insightful presentations and discussions at the meeting, and none of the research leading to the identification of better therapies for AD has been made possible by the families of our AD patients who made our research possible.—John Trojanowski

See also:

Duda J, Lee VM-Y, Trojanowski JQ. Pathogenesis of dementia: Updating the role of synuclein pathology in sporadic and hereditary Alzheimer's disease. Neuroscientific Basis of Dementia. Tanaka C, Ihara Y and McGeer PL(Eds.), Birkhaeuser Verlag, Basel, Switzerland, pp. 131-136, 2001.

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Further Reading

Papers

1. Trojanowski JQ, Lee VM. "Fatal attractions" of proteins. A comprehensive hypothetical mechanism underlying Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2000;924:62-7. PubMed.
2. Galvin JE, Lee VM, Trojanowski JQ. Synucleinopathies: clinical and pathological implications. Arch Neurol. 2001 Feb;58(2):186-90. PubMed.
3. Irizarry MC, Hyman BT. Alzheimer disease therapeutics. J Neuropathol Exp Neurol. 2001 Oct;60(10):923-8. PubMed.
4. Mayeux R, Sano M. Treatment of Alzheimer's disease. N Engl J Med. 1999 Nov 25;341(22):1670-9. PubMed.
5. Trojanowski JQ. Alzheimer's disease centers and the dementias of aging program of the national institute on aging: a brief overview. J Alzheimers Dis. 2001 Apr;3(2):249-251. PubMed.