BrainBlog

Read the In The Pipeline blog entry (06 December 2011).

From Drug Discovery & Development : Positive Study Results for Schizophrenia Drug Drug Discovery & Development December 05, 2011 "EnVivo Pharmaceuticals announced the analysis of a completed Phase 2b clinical trial of EVP-6124, a novel, orally bioavailable nicotinic alpha-7 agonist, in schizophrenia." Read the full report

From The University of Cambridge: The Ethics of Smart Drugs 31 October 2011 Read the full article here

New pharmacological strategies for treatment of Alzheimer's disease: focus on disease-modifying drugs British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology. 2011 Oct 28; Salomone S, Caraci F, Leggio GM, Fedotova J, Drago F Abstract Current approved drug treatments for Alzheimer disease (AD) include cholinesterase inhibitors (donepezil, rivastigmine, galantamine) and the NMDA receptor antagonist memantine. These drugs provide symptomatic relief but poorly affect the progression of the disease. Drug discovery has been directed, in the last ten years, to develop "disease-modifying drugs" hopefully able to counteract the progression of AD. Because in a chronic, slow progressing pathological process, such as AD, an early start of treatment enhances the chance of success, it is crucial to have biomarkers for early detection of AD-related brain dysfunction, usable before clinical onset. Reliable early biomarkers need therefore to be prospectively tested for predictive accuracy, with specifi...

From EurekaAlert: UCSF-Pfizer partnership yields projects aimed at clinical trials 26 October 2011 Read the full article

The current (October 2011) issue of the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry has free-download access to two review articles dealing with Alzheimer's disease. One deals with drug treatment, whilst the other addresses non-pharmacolgic treatments. An editiorial by Serge Gauthier (also a free download) introduces the issue. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry

Today's recommended article to read; abstract from PubMed : Bergmans BA & De Strooper B. gamma-secretases: From cell biology to therapeutic strategies. Lancet Neurology . 2010 Feb; 9(2 ): 215-226. Department of Molecular and Developmental Genetics, VIB, Leuven, Belgium; Center for Human Genetics , Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium. Presenilins form the catalytic part of the gamma-secretases , protein complexes that are responsible for the intramembranous cleavage of transmembrane proteins. The presenilins are involved in several biological functions, but are best known for their role in the generation of the beta-amyloid (Abeta) peptide in Alzheimer's disease and are therefore thought to be important drug targets for this disorder. Mutations in the presenilin genes cause early-onset familial Alzheimer's disease, but mutation carriers have substantial phenotypic heterogeneity. Recent evidence implicating presenilin mutations in non-Alzheimer's dementia...

From Fierce Biotech : UCSF enters drug discovery agreement with Genentech Posted February 19, 2010 "The University of California, San Francisco has signed a partnership agreement with Genentech, Inc., a wholly owned member of the Roche Group, to discover and develop drug candidates for neurodegenerative diseases. "Through the agreement, Genentech will provide funding and its research acumen in neuroscience and will collaborate with UCSF to identify small molecules." Read the full article

The Genesis 2009 Conference will take place on the 10th and 11th of December at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre (London). From the website: " Welcome to Genesis 2009 – “Back in focus!” The challenges of the economic downturn stimulated us to build innovative new partnerships at Genesis last year. The resultant exciting mix of business and science is something many have only dreamed of. This will be retained for 2009 with a streamlined approach for delegates to maximise the return on your investment in participating." For details, please see the conference website

From The New York Times : Biotech Tries to Shrug Off Setbacks By JAMES FLANIGAN Published: September 17, 2009 "While some investors are pulling back, life sciences companies continue to innovate, and hope the capital to expand will come." Read the piece

World Alzheimer's Day

The 10th international conference on Alzheimer's disease drug discovery takes place next week on the 14th and 15th in Jersey City, NJ. From the conference website: "The 10th International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease Drug Discovery is presented by the Alzheimer's Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF), the only public charity solely dedicated to rapidly accelerating the discovery and development of drugs to prevent, treat and cure Alzheimer's disease and cognitive aging. This conference brings together academic and industry scientists to accelerate the development of novel drug discovery programs for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias." Visit the conference website

Available at BMC Neurology Proceedings of the 2009 Drug Discovery for Neurodegeneration Conference Proceedings from Drug Discovery for Neurodegeneration Conference Washington, DC, USA. 2–3 February 2009 Edited by Diana W Shineman and Howard M Fillit BMC Neurology Contents of Volume 9 Suppl 1 Click here for open access to contents of this issue

C-SPAN-3 is currently airing an earlier session by the subcommittee on aging on the topic of Alzheimer's Disease. All C-SPAN channels can be streamed online. Information about the program can be found here .

Becker RE & Greig NH. Alzheimer's disease drug development in 2008 and beyond: Problems and opportunities. Current Alzheimer Research . 2008 Aug; 5(4): 346-357. Drug Design & Development Section, Laboratory of Neurosciences, Intramural Research Program, National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, MD 21224, USA. Recently, a number of Alzheimer's disease (AD) multi-center clinical trials (CT) have failed to provide statistically significant evidence of drug efficacy. To test for possible design or execution flaws we analyzed in detail CTs for two failed drugs that were strongly supported by preclinical evidence and by proven CT AD efficacy for other drugs in their class. Studies of the failed commercial trials suggest that methodological flaws may contribute to the failures and that these flaws lurk within current drug development practices ready to impact other AD drug development [1]. To identify and counter risks we considered the relevance...