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Professor David Nutt has been appointed to the newly created Edmond J. Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology and as head of the new Department of Neuropsychopharmacology and Molecular Imaging. The chair was funded by the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation and Lily Safra. The department is the joint effort of Imperial College and the Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust.

Nutt’s particular expertise is in how brain circuitry works, particularly as regards anxiety, depression and addiction. He said would like to use advanced PET scanning techniques to have pilot studies under way for new treatments in five years.

Researchers have long looked at plaque in the brain built up by amyloid proteins as a cause of Alzheimer’s. Nutt said he hopes to examine the role inflammation might play in the poorly understood process of why the plaque builds up.

In earlier research, Nutt demonstrated faults in the brain’s main systems inhibiting brain signals in those suffering from alcoholism or severe anxiety.

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The U.K.’s Alzheimer’s Research Trust paid for the study which was published in the most recent issue of The Lancet Neurology. The research was conducted by a team led by Clive Ballard of King’s College in London.

The study focused on 165 patients in Alzheimer’s care homes. All of the subjects had been taking antipsychotic drugs to battle the effects of dementia. For the research, about half the patients kept taking the antipsychotic medication while the other half began receiving a placebo.

After three years, about two-thirds of patients taking the placebo were still alive while only one-third of those taking the medication lived. Specifically, after 24 months, the survival rate for those on medication was 41 percent as opposed to 71 percent for those withdrawn from medication. After 36 months, 30 percent of those on medication survived while 59 percent on the placebo were still alive.

A report compiled for a British Member of Parliament last year showed that about 100,000 Alzheimer’s patients with dementia routinely receive antipsychotic medication. The drugs target the symptoms of dementia such as aggression and delusion.

Ballard said the lesson of the study is that the research and care-giving communities need to seek more benign treatments for dementia symptoms.

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Dr. Siegfried Hekimi of the school’s Department of Biology said the drug clioquinol directly effects the CLK-1 protein and could act to slow aging. While exactly how the drug affects CLK-1 is unknown, Hekimi said a possible explanation is the fact that clioquinol is known to affect metal in the bloodstream, leading him to theorize that metals are involved some way.

Researchers tested the compound on mice and some invertebrates and demonstrated that it inhibited CLK-1 and impacted the progression of Alzheimer’s and two other age-related disease.

However, Hekimi advised caution, saying far more research is required.

The drug, clioquinol, was used widely in Asia and Europe for gastrointestinal disorders. However, in the ’60s in Japan, it was linked to an outbreak of subacute myelo-optic neuropathy (SMON) and taken off the market. But some researchers point out that the incident was never studied and that the drug has been used safely since, casting doubt on the link between it and SMON, according to McGill.

At right: Dr. Siegfried Hekimi

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Yuji Goto works at the Institute for Protein Research at Japan’s Osaka University and along with fellow researchers has been using lasers to better observe tangles of protein known as amyloids. Their goal was to study how the tangles formed.

In the lab, Goto and associates added a dye that specifically attaches to amyloids then made it fluorescent by hitting it with a laser. But in addition to making it easier to observe the fiber tangles, they found that in certain circumstances the laser-hit fibers stopped growing and some even degraded. The dye is called thioflavin T.

What causes this? According to the American Society of Biological Chemistry, Goto thinks that exciting the dye with the laser causes it to transfer its energy to oxygen nearby. The resulting active oxygen then affects the protein fibers.

Goto’s research is being published in the current issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

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Lord James Black, the Nobel Prize-winning developer of beta blockers, recently addressed business and biotech leaders in London and pointed to a troubling trend. As he has approached pharmaceutical companies with ideas for new drugs and sought funding to work on them, he said he found the companies increasingly reluctant to take a chance on projects that previously they would have supported.

The reasons for the reluctance are complicated:

• First, major drug makers long depended on profits from top-selling products to fund research and development on new medication. The cost of the R&D could run into the billions industry wide, with company executives aware that most of the projects would not bear fruit while the few “blockbuster” products would cover the costs. Now many of their best products have patents that are about to expire and few have promising drugs to bring to market in place of them.
• A second cause of the drying up of research funds, according to industry experts, is that the government review process has become longer, slower and more rigorous.
• Finally, the investment community, particularly in the current financial environment, is less supportive of companies taking big risks in hopes of hitting the home run with a major medical breakthrough.

This is particularly concerning as regards research into diseases for which a hoped-for cure is a long way off, such as Alzheimer’s, because the money will flow in increasing amounts to projects that promise a faster and more certain return.

One solution being considered in England is for investors and companies to form biotech joint ventures that are smaller, less costly and can focus entirely on one project. While money for such joint ventures has been harder to come by recently, the British government, working with major corporations, is considering a $3 billion fund to jump-start the effort.

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Initially, researchers believed the shortage of donated brains was a result of people being uncomfortable with the thought of it. However, following a recent outreach program, they are now convinced the issue is one of education and awareness.

One thing is clear and that is the need. Dr. Payam Rezaie told the BBC recently that the Open University’s Neuropathology Research Lab only had 20 brains for research, where more than a hundred are needed. He labeled those numbers “drastically awful.”

Scientists need brains of disease sufferers and healthy individuals as well, and the head of England’s Human Tissue Authority, that oversees donations, said it is more difficult to find healthy donors.

Interestingly, a recent “brain bank” established in Scotland by the Tissue Authority showed that making people aware of the problem is the key to solving it. When officials approached friends or relatives of potential doners who were required to have an autopsy to verify cause of death, more than 90 percent authorized the donation.

Oddly enough, the effort has been hampered somewhat by the country’s organ donor program. The researchers say many who have signed donor cards to donate organs upon their death believe that covers the brain. It doesn’t. Donor cards cover organs donated for transplant only, not research.

For immediate action, Britain’s Medical Research Council is coordinating the data gathered by all brain banks nationally.

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Lawmakers in Wisconsin and Indiana have said they will propose bills to create the program, and a newspaper in Tennessee is calling for similar action. Any new programs would join 13 states that already have created Silver Alerts.

The need for the program is clear. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, more than 60 percent of Alzheimer’s patients who are suffering from dementia will wander from their home or care facility.

States participating in the program now include:

• California
• Colorado
• Florida
• Georgia
• Illinois
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Michigan
• North Carolina
• Ohio
• Oklahoma
• Texas
• Virginia

In Wisconsin, State Sen. Mary Lazich is heading a bipartisan effort with Rep. Amy Sue Vruwink. Lazich is a Republican and Vruwink a Democrat.

A common concern for officials is the cost of the program. For example, two years ago New York state elected not to implement it citing costs. But the Wisconsin lawmakers believe the technology already in place for such programs as the Amber Alert reduces the cost impact of a similar program for Alzheimer’s-related dementia.

In Indiana, Republican Sen. Pat Miller will introduce a bill for a Silver Alert program. Interest in the effort grew when lawmakers in neighboring Kentucky unanimously approved a bill creating the “Golden Alert” program, identical to the Silver Alert. In its first year, Kentucky’s Golden Alert helped find 12 Alzheimer’s patients who had wandered from home.

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The program, called Assisting Family Caregivers, recognizes the emotional, physical and financial stresses that can impact a family member providing Alzheimer’s care, said David Coon, AFC director, who also is a professor at Arizona State University.

Among the program’s goals is to increase caregivers’ skill at

• managing dementia-related behavioral challenges
• managing the stresses and mood changes they experience as caregivers
• effectively communicating with the Alzheimer’s patient, family members and health care professionals

Assisting Family Caregivers has partnered with the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium – which has provided support since the program started – and other community organizations in Phoenix and statewide.

The training provided ranges from group sessions to one-on-one instruction by phone. Participants are interviewed in their homes before and after the training and receive $50 in exchange for completing the course. The training can be conducted in English or Spanish, and the program currently is seeking participants in Phoenix and southern Arizona, Coon said.

The quarter of a million dollar grant is funded by the U.S. Administration on Aging. Family caregivers who would like to be considered for participation in the program can contact Coon’s Arizona State University West Campus office at (602) 543-6364 (English) and (602) 327-6010 (Spanish).

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The Institute on Aging operates the bay area’s Alzheimer’s Day Care Resource Center. Working with StoryCorps, a national oral history project, Alzheimer’s patients, along with a family member, are guided by story-telling experts to recount favorite and important moments from their lives. The 40-minute sessions are recorded in a mobile studio. The stories are preserved on CDs with a copy being given to the participant, and, with permission, a second copy going to a database in the Library of Congress.

StoryCorps is a non-profit organization sponsored by National Public Radio and the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center. Since 2003, StoryCorps volunteers have recorded more than 23,000 personal histories. Each recording session is conducted by a volunteer trained to help the teller recount his or her story and supported by a recording technician.

Tracy Chesna, who directs programs at the Alzheimer’s care center, said she and her staff hear “amazing stories” of their patients’ lives every day and immediately saw the value in helping families preserve these memories. As an irreversible, progressive brain disease, Alzheimer’s patients suffer memory loss, which worsens over time.

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Marking the start of Alzheimer’s Awareness Month, the Alzheimer Society of Canada released data this month that showed 71,000 of the half-million Canadians living with the disease or dementia related to it are younger than 65.

The data means the impact of the disease won’t be limited to the country’s health care system but will affect business and industry as well as they deal with workers who contract it.

Among the facts revealed by the study are:

• Of Canadians over age 65, one in 11 suffer from Alzheimer’s or related dementia.
• Of Alzheimer’s sufferers, women comprise 72 per cent.
• Another 250,000 people in Canada might develop the disease within five years.
• The total number of Canadians with the disease could more than double in 25 years to between 1 million and 1.3 million.

As a result, the Canadian Society called on citizens to donate in January in support of Alzheimer’s research and to make their concerns known to lawmakers.

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