Se Selenium

The New York Times describes how a group of scientists and executives from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the drug and medical-imaging industries, universities and nonprofit groups joined in a project that experts say had no precedent: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in the human brain. “It was unbelievable,” said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, director of Penn's Alzheimer's Disease Core Center. “It’s not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.” “Companies were caught in a prisoner’s dilemma,” said Jason Karlawish, MD, of the Penn Memory Center. “They all wanted to move the field forward, but no one wanted to take the risks of doing it.”

The New York Times describes how a group of scientists and executives from the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, the drug and medical-imaging industries, universities and nonprofit groups joined in a project that experts say had no precedent: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer’s disease in the human brain. “It was unbelievable,” said Dr. John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, director of Penn's Alzheimer's Disease Core Center. “It’s not science the way most of us have practiced it in our careers. But we all realized that we would never get biomarkers unless all of us parked our egos and intellectual-property noses outside the door and agreed that all of our data would be public immediately.” “Companies were caught in a prisoner’s dilemma,” said Jason Karlawish, MD, of the Penn Memory Center. “They all wanted to move the field forward, but no one wanted to take the risks of doing it.”

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that a screening test developed largely at the University of Pennsylvania has proved surprisingly good at predicting who will go from relatively mild memory decline to full-blown Alzheimer's disease. And that's raising hopes that new drugs might fight the disease early, before the brain becomes irreparably damaged, said John Trojanowski, MD, PhD, director of Penn's Alzheimer's Disease Core Center who helped develop the test - a measure of three proteins in patients' cerebrospinal fluid. Another Penn researcher, Leslie Shaw, PhD, professor of Pathology and Lab Medicine, also played a lead role in developing the test. The test is unlikely to be widely used until there's something people can do to stave off the disease, said Jason Karlawish, MD, an associate professor in Geriatric Medicine and Medical Ethics.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that a screening test developed largely at the University of Pennsylvania has proved surprisingly good at predicting who will go from relatively mild memory decline to full-blown Alzheimer's disease. And that's raising hopes that new drugs might fight the disease early, before the brain becomes irreparably damaged, said John Trojanowski, MD, PhD, director of Penn's Alzheimer's Disease Core Center who helped develop the test - a measure of three proteins in patients' cerebrospinal fluid. Another Penn researcher, Leslie Shaw, PhD, professor of Pathology and Lab Medicine, also played a lead role in developing the test. The test is unlikely to be widely used until there's something people can do to stave off the disease, said Jason Karlawish, MD, an associate professor in Geriatric Medicine and Medical Ethics.

Ideas about how to treat Alzheimer’s fall into two main categories. The main one pins its hopes on blocking amyloid beta peptides that form areas of plaque on the brain. But there is also another protein, tau, that is part of the disease. The third article in a New York Times occasional series called "The Vanishing Mind," which covers the Alzheimer's disease epidemic, features Penn's Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) drug-discovery program and the tau research of John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, director of the Penn Institute on Aging and CNDR co-director and Virginia M.-Y. Lee, PhD, MBA, CNDR director. Trojanowski states there is a danger in the intense focus on amyloid beta. "That lulls everyone into thinking that if we treat a beta we will solve the problem,” he said. “That would be wonderful if it’s true. But we need to have other targets, too.”

Ideas about how to treat Alzheimer’s fall into two main categories. The main one pins its hopes on blocking amyloid beta peptides that form areas of plaque on the brain. But there is also another protein, tau, that is part of the disease. The third article in a New York Times occasional series called "The Vanishing Mind," which covers the Alzheimer's disease epidemic, features Penn's Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) drug-discovery program and the tau research of John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, director of the Penn Institute on Aging and CNDR co-director and Virginia M.-Y. Lee, PhD, MBA, CNDR director. Trojanowski states there is a danger in the intense focus on amyloid beta. "That lulls everyone into thinking that if we treat a beta we will solve the problem,” he said. “That would be wonderful if it’s true. But we need to have other targets, too.”

An article on Philadelphia Magazine’s web put notes that “the area and enormousness of superior services at UPHS earned it 21st job in the political entity for geriatrics in the most fresh U.S. Hearsay & Everybody Report rankings.” A number of Penn programs are featured. “Early diagnosis is haughty because the sooner you start medication, the greater chance you cause of delaying the progression,” says Steven Arnold, MD, a neurologist and geriatric psychiatrist and associate governor the University of Pennsylvania’s Alzheimer’s Cancer Center. The article says that “Penn is so in the forefront in research that it wouldn't be surprising if a repair for Alzheimer's or a breakthrough grasp of what causes the deterioration of intellectual cells in Parkinson’s disability came from these labs.” <<>>