New center’s aim: to ID biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases (Links to an external site)

Nicolas Barthélemy, PhD, an assistant professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, loads a sample into a mass spectrometer. Barthélemy uses mass spectrometry as part of his work at the university’s new Tracy Family SILQ Center for Neurodegenerative Biology. The center was established to help researchers discover, study and validate biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, with a goal of identifying new drug targets and creating better diagnostic and prognostic tests.

A new center established at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis aims to accelerate research into biomarkers of neurodegenerative conditions such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis (MS) and the so-called tauopathies, a group that includes Alzheimer’s disease along with rarer diseases such as frontotemporal dementia, corticobasal syndrome […]

Washington University in St. Louis Leads International Alzheimer’s Clinical Trial to Test Tau Drugs

An international clinical trial aimed at finding treatments for Alzheimer’s disease has expanded to include investigational drugs targeting a harmful form of the brain protein tau. Originally focused on amyloid-based therapies, the trial launched with funding from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2013. Source: HEC Media

Consortium to investigate role of neurofilament light chain in neurodegenerative diseases (Links to an external site)

Clinical scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and University College London are collaborating with pharmaceutical companies AbbVie, Biogen, Bristol Myers Squibb and Roche to investigate the role of neurofilament light (NfL) chain in neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology joins consortium to investigate neurodegenerative diseases (Links to an external site)

This collaborative effort between UCL, Washington University, and pharmaceutical companies such as AbbVie, Biogen, Bristol Myers Squibb and Roche aims to better understand the structure and role of NfL across different neurodegenerative diseases, including amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, Huntington’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s protein in blood indicates early brain changes (Links to an external site)

Two decades or more before symptoms arise, plaques of a sticky protein called amyloid begin forming in the brains of people later diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that levels of a specific protein in the blood rise as amyloid plaques form in the brain. […]

Blood Tests of Phospho-Tau, Aβ42, Track With Brain Amyloid (Links to an external site)

While a suite of new CSF markers has entered a mature stage where they get validated with identical methods in large international cohorts, much newer blood tests are catching up fast. Scientists are pushing the limits of detection of the core AD markers in plasma, and in the process are cracking open what used to […]

Are Aβ Blood Tests Ready for Prime Time? (Links to an external site)

In the short space of two years, the erstwhile fantasy of a blood test for Alzheimer’s disease has become reality. Or so it seems. At the 2017 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London, Randall Bateman, Washington University, St. Louis, had wowed the audience by showing how an exquisitely sensitive mass spectroscopy assay of plasma detected a […]

The unexpected way we might one day diagnose Alzheimer’s (Links to an external site)

How do you stop Alzheimer’s disease without a simple way to diagnose it? It’s a real chicken and egg problem, as I wrote last year on TGN. Discovering a treatment for Alzheimer’s requires lots of clinical trials for new drugs—but it’s difficult to enroll participants without a way to identify people who have the disease early […]

Blood Tests for Amyloid Step Out at CTAD (Links to an external site)

It seems blood tests for Aβ have moved off the wish list and are becoming reality—almost. Building a knowledge base for plasma measures as a proxy for brain amyloid, multiple methods applied to different research cohorts are now consistently linking low plasma Aβ42/40 to clinical, cognitive, and biomarker evidence of Alzheimer’s disease.