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New Alzheimer's Drug Shows Promise
An anonymous reader writes "The Herald Sun is reporting that researchers may have some progress to report on the Alzheimer's front. A new drug, called PBT2, was developed by a Melbourne-based biotech firm that has been showing some promising results. From the article: 'Early clinical testing has confirmed the drug is fast-acting. Levels of amyloid dropped by 60 per cent within 24 hours of a single dose. It found also that PBT2 suppresses the impairment of memory function. More human studies begin in Sweden next month and Australians will join a major international trial of the drug next year.'"
Now I can have photographic memory.
"The Herald Sun is reporting that researchers may have some progress to report on the Alzheimer's front. Maybe. They can't exactly remember one way or the other..."
The Herald Sun is reporting that researchers may have some progress to report on the Alzheimer's front. A new drug, called PBT2, was developed by a Melbourne-based biotech firm that has been showing some promising results.
Fantastic. Now they just have to remember to take it.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
What were you talking about?
Now I can fish out the bananas on the moon!
... if they name it something that doesn't look like the written version of blowing a raspberry. "OK, Grandma, it's time to take your Pbbbbbbbbt!"
From the article: 'Early clinical testing has confirmed the drug is fast-acting. Levels of amyloid dropped by 60 per cent within 24 hours of a single dose. It found also that PBT2 suppresses the impairment of memory function.
;-)
The article seems to be wrong - press releases on the Prana Biotechnology website indicate these results are from studies in mice.
More human studies begin in Sweden next month and Australians will join a major international trial of the drug next year.
If the data is from mice, then the above clinical trial is presumably a phase I clinical trial, which is designed to show safety and not efficacy. It could be a while before human data is available.
Of course, none of this will stop investors believing the article
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)
I have heard linkages between alzheimers and "mad cow disease", I wonder if this drug will be able to fix both problems. I can finally start eating all cows indiscriminately!!!
You take it, I don't want it...
If this drug is found to actually work, and proceeds to be available for general use within the next five years, it would be a major reversal of the trends we're seeing at the moment. I work in a nursing home designed and built in the 70's, when nursing homes tended to be the place you stayed briefly before dying. Now with our medical advances, together with the high level of day to day care, individually tailored diets etc, we're dealing with people who are living longer. This means we're now running into problems with alzheimers, excarberated by the cocktail of drugs administered. Effectively we're now running into trouble trying to keep people with high level dementia in unsuited facillities. The possibility of an effective treatment for alzheimers makes me wonder if we might be going to move back to the older situation, with lives limited by health again.
[clever sig]
It's interesting but not (yet) as significant as TFA makes out.
e wsid=47696
These are studies on transgenic mice, so it's more a proof-of-concept rather than clinical trials which will be some way off - mostly due to bureaucracy.
For those who want a quick *scientific-ish* summary:
It is widely believed that a protein called Beta-Amyloid is reponsible synaptic dysfunction in Altzheimer's disease. Another variant (Alpha-Amyloid) also does horrible things to the body such as renal failure and constrictive pericarditis. This often happens as a result of certain auto-immune diseases (which is my speciality).
These tests are based on the accidental discovery that a dysentry drug (PBT-1) has some effects on restoring some cognitive function in patients. The company pursuing this has created a drug which is more specifically targeted towards reducing levels of A-A. And... so far, so good. The mice show greatly reduced A-A levels and they perform better in mazes. I wish them all the best - Altzheimers is a horrible and frightening disease.
For those who would like a fuller summary in non newspaper-speak, try http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?n
Living through your parent's early onset (at 50 years) Alzheimer's really takes egde off any humour of this story. Personally, I welcome these news, there are too few of them. Unfortunately, this drug would come too late for my father, who has now been living with this for 15 years (he really takes his time to do things properly, even dying). New drugs would also offer some hope for relatives, since A is also hereditary to at least some extent.
so if you slip up once in taking them, will you forget to take them indefinately? call me when these pills remind you that they have to be taken with wailing sirens & flashing lights on the pill bottle.
Brothers, our time has come. This is the secret weapon that will allow our final victory over The Old People! With this technology in our hands, they will be our slaves. They will mine our ore and harvest our lumber to have access to our precious Alzheimers medicine. The Groundor has become the Groundee. He who controls the spice, er, meds, controls the universe!
Is it just me or does it seem like every few months, the healthcare media pops up an article about some newfangled treatment that shows "promise" for some disease that everyone knows about? And is it me again, or do we almost never hear about these promising treatments years later? The cynic in me would say that it smells like someone trying to drum up some investment money. What's that? Prana Biotechnologies is listed on the Nasdaq as "PRAN"? And the announcement hit the media before the Monday opening bell? I'm shocked.
Sadly, the less cynical part of me wonders why we only ever read articles about drugs that show "promise"? When was the last time we saw an article titled "Cure for Disease Found!"? And no, I don't have Alzheimers. I honestly can't recall.
The problem with this drug is that its promise is based on 2 assumptions:
1) that amyloid has a causal role in Alzheimers
2) lowering amyloid will halt or reverse Alzheimers
Given that we don't actually know that either is true, we really have no idea how good the promise of this drug is. What we DO know is that promises have made a lot of pharmaceutical companies and their management very very very rich. Not that I would begrudge them that if they actually come through with a halfway effective drug. But I also think there should be penalties for putting out media announcements and raising false hopes without even having tested it out on a single human being yet.
"The only normal people are the ones you don't know very well."
Yet another Australian story from ScuttleMonkey!
Go figure.
Now, how about a couple hundred more links to your pal Roland's adblog, SM?
I think this may be a dupe, but I can't remember. Perhaps I really suffer from attention defi Let's go ride BICYCLES!
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I wonder (and perhaps someone with more education than I can speculate), if amyloid concetrations in the brain are reduced, will the patients be able to remember things that they have forgotten, or will they "just" be capable of remembering new information again?
Otherwise are we going to see stories on every new potential wonder drug coming down the pipe?
Now, maybe, possibly, Daryl and others at SCO will have a chance. They seem to be suffering from something?
Or is it IBM who "destroyed evidence" according to SCO?
Anyway, early Monday AM and someone needs these meds.
"Thank you for calling the Alzheimer's Research...umm...uhh...lavatory. Lobotomy. Oh gosh..."
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
There are many non-Alzheimer's dementias. It will be great if they can cure, or even treat Alzheimer's; but if that's the case, I hope it doesn't cause people to lose interest (and funding) to find treatments/cures for all the other types.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Now where did I park my car again?
In two related stories from the UK, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence explained that this was not a cost effective treatment for early stage Alzheimers, but was endorsed for use by the National Health Service for extreme late stage cases with a life expectancy not exceeding 6 months. The news was applauded by the Ministry of Health, who released a statement yesterday in which they said that just as it was inappropriate to treat macular degeneration until it has caused the loss of sight in at least one eye, so it could not be a national priority to treat Alzheimers patients until they were well and truly demented.
The second story followed a day later, and consisted of a chorus of local health authorities explaining that they were not proposing to prescribe the drug in cases endorsed by NICE because it was too expensive and they were running out of budget, and of course, they would find it impossible to prescribe for cases where NICE had not endorsed it.
However, they encouraged the British public who felt that they would benefit from this and other treatments which they chose not to provide, or not to provide in a timely manner, to remortgage their houses, and pay for the treatments themselves. This after all was the general practice in the UK for other rare and exotic treatments for uncommon conditions, such as hip replacements, tamoxifen for breat cancer, diagnostic scans following accidents and so on.
Members of the British public, interviewed on the BBC, said they were delighted to be living in the UK and looked after by the NHS. It was after all the envy of the world, and free at the point of use. Many of them volunteered that they had been looked after in a most caring fashion by the staff of their local hospital, who had cured them of difficult cases of MRSA, doubtless contracted by their relatives not washing their hands before visiting the ward.
"Professor Bush also presented mechanistic findings showing that PBT2 blocks the copper-dependent formation of amyloid oligomers, considered by many to be the toxic chemical entity leading to brain damage in Alzheimer's disease."
So, at 76 should I stop taking 1 mg of copper supplementation daily?
I am, by know means, knowledgable of such matters, but I do find them interesting nonetheless. A couple of things I've heard about degenerative brain diseases are:
1) Maintaining an active mind and constantantly challenging your cognitive abilities can actually protect you from conditions like Alzheimer's.
2) Nicotene can provide protection/relief from not only Alzheimer's but also Parkinson's and Schizophrenia.
These are just things I've heard/read, but I don't know how good the source is, thus, I have no idea as the their validity. Given the social-political climate surrounding the latter, this is one those where I'd love to hear the scientific community chime in on. I mean, if it don't work and/or it can't be rendered safe...then "game over" look for something else. However, I'd hate to think some lawyer/politician is blocking research that might ultimtely prove useful. This wouldn't be the first "poisionous plant" we've gotten medication out of (if I understand correctly).
My thing is, I tend to have more access to the political debate as opposed to scientific data. So, I wish I had more access to the raw data. I guess my opinion is the same for "medical marijuana". I don't care what the politicians/lawyers think, I want to know what the medical/scientific community thinks. I suspect I'm not alone in this.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
oh, wait, how did we make the stuff?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
...the last time a bunch of doctors thought they cured Alzheimer's, Stellan Skarsgard got his arm bit off by a super-intelligent shark.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Does anyone know if human trials are planned for the US?
Man, if drug companies are evil, this is where they are: hyping up compounds that have only begun to be tested in humans, just to pump up share prices (literally only begun, the announcement of the plan to test this drug in humans was made in May 2006). Although the preclinical, rodent data is good, drugs which have treated the transgenic models of Alzhiemer's have fallen flat many times before. It's worth noting that this same company had the drug PBT1 already being trialed in human Alzhimer's patients in 2003, but for some reason (*cough* probably toxic as hell *cough*) the trials were canceled, and this new drugs was rolled out. Again, skepticism is the order of the day for pharmaceutical company press releases.
-BilZ0r www.ilikethings.net
Suppose this really is an effective treatment. It will be 10-15 years before it grinds through the system and is available. What happened to the comic book scientists that inject themselves with their promising drugs and gain super powers? Seriously though - if the mouse studies and the stage I studies are far enough to whow efficacy in mice and that it's at least reasonably tolerated in humans why not go for it? People with late stage Alzheimers have nothing to lose. People with earlier stage disease sometimes suicide when faced with the immenent death of their minds.
/. story.... nobody will ever even read this, much less answer.
The FDA has all sorts of bizzare rules that you must follow if you want to sell in the US, and if you can't sell in the US you can't sell in most other countries.
Isn't there some country where people are allowed to take highly experimental drugs and make themselves lab rats to try to save their lives or sanity?
Ah, but this is a 12+ hour old
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
Let's just hope nobody finds a way to use this promising medicine as a form of birth control or it will never see the light of day regardless of what it cures.