The goal of the $10,000 WashU Medicine Bold Pioneer Award is to recognize and encourage early career investigators who have demonstrated bold, pioneering research that is high-risk by virtue of being fundamentally different from standard approaches. The intent is to encourage scientific research investigators to challenge status quo approaches by developing fundamentally different methods, approaches, […]
Author: Editor
New center’s aim: to ID biomarkers of neurodegenerative diseases (Links to an external site)
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 […]
Alzheimer’s Blood Test: An expert panel with WUSTL (Links to an external site)
Scientists have devised a blood test to detect proteins that form the plaques in the brain that are suspected to cause Alzheimer’s. They believe this may lead to being able to diagnose Alzheimer’s before showing symptoms.
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.
International Alzheimer’s clinical trial to test tau drugs (Links to an external site)
A worldwide 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.
Novel form of Alzheimer’s protein found in spinal fluid indicates stage of the disease (Links to an external site)
A novel form of an Alzheimer’s protein found in the fluid that surrounds the brain and spinal cord indicates what stage of the disease a person is in, and tracks with tangles of tau protein in the brain, according to a study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Tau tangles […]
Creating a blood test for the detection of Alzheimer’s disease (Links to an external site)
News-Medical spoke to Dr. Randall Bateman and Dr. Nicolas Barthélemy from Washington University about their research on Alzheimer’s disease, and their new technique that can detect Alzheimer’s from a blood test.
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.
With Sudden Progress, Blood Aβ Rivals PET at Detecting Amyloid (Links to an external site)
A lot can happen in a year. At the 2017 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London, Randall Bateman’s team at Washington University in St. Louis wowed the crowd with a blood assay for Aβ that predicted brain amyloid with previously unattainable specificity and sensitivity (Jul 2017 conference news).