Alzheimer's Research Shows Early Promise

Five million people suffer from Alzheimer's disease in the United States alone. There has been much research through the years to attempt to stop this disease in its tracks or to at least slow down its progression.

With the baby boomer generation moving steadily toward the most frequent age ranges for the development of Alzheimer's, there will no doubt be even greater numbers diagnosed in the future-and a very large market for the pharmaceutical companies to capture.

For many years, many scientists focused on the amyloid plaques that had developed in the brains of Alzheimer's patients were the cause of the disease. Today, there are fewer scientists who believe this; they consider whether the amyloid plaques may not, in fact, be a consequence of the disease.

The early medications formulated to be given to Alzheimer's patients were anti-amyloid in their action. Dr. Zaven Khachturian, former head of Alzheimer's research for the National Institutes of Health and current president of Las Vegas' Keep Memory alive has stated, "We are beginning to find out that when you eliminate the amyloid, some people still have the dementia" (R. Langreth, More Doubts on New Alzheimer's Drug, 2008, July 29, Forbes.com).

Claude Wischik, founder of TauRx Therapeutics, a biotech company, argues that another protein substance, tau, rather than amyloid, is the causative agent for Alzheimer's disease. Larry Altstiel, a Pfizer neurologist, still firmly believes that the answer to treating the disease lies with the amyloid.

One of the compounding and confounding factors for physicians and scientists alike is that Alzheimer's disease is slow to progress in the early stages and perhaps by time a patient has enough symptoms to be diagnosable, it may be too late for effective treatment.

All the news about new medication on the horizon is not negative, though.

On Tuesday, July 29, 2008 at a Chicago conference of the Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, there were thousands of neurologists present to listen to the news about some of the latest research into medications for Alzheimer's disease.

One of the largest clinical studies recently had been on an anti-amyloid drug, Flurizan, being developed by Myriad Genetics. It was found to be entirely ineffective in its final stage of testing, much to the disappointment of many.

But TauRx Therapeutics had positive news to report on the effectiveness in its anti-tau drug trials. The drug, being called Rember, is in its second-stage trials, and this far the researchers have seen the drug halt the progression of Alzheimer's disease for 19 months. The drug, which has actually been around since the early 20^th century for the treatment of bladder infections, is now being studied for its anti-tau properties.

Allon Therapeutics is also researching an anti-tau drug and a company called Medivation. The drug is named Dimebon and was first used as an antihistamine in Russia. The company reported that the drug slowed the progression of Alzheimer's in a large trial study done in Russia.

But even TauRx founder Claude Wischik advises that all of these studies are suggestive, but not yet proof positive that these medications offer the hope that patients and health care workers have been hoping for. More clinical trials must be done to determine effectiveness as well as potential side effects, but hope does seem to be on the horizon.