An FDA-approved drug called bexarotene counters many of the effects of Alzheimer’s disease in mouse models, researchers report. The build-up of protein fragments called amyloid-beta is a key feature of the disease; everyone’s brain produces amyloid-beta, but in healthy individuals, enzymes break the fragments down, with help from a protein called ApoE. Paige Cramer and colleagues knew that bexarotene activates a protein that helps switch on the ApoEgene, and they hypothesized that the drug might therefore enhance the clearance of amyloid-beta in the brain. They gave the drug to mice engineered to have an Alzheimer’s-like condition and observed that levels of the protein fragments in the mice’s brains dropped substantially within just a few days. The mice also showed improvements in their cognitive, social and olfactory performance. Bexarotene, also known as Targretin, is currently used to treat a form of skin cancer and has a favorable safety profile, the authors note. The drug activates the nuclear receptor protein known as RXR, which binds one of two other nuclear receptors, PPAR and LXR. These receptor pairs then activate the transcription of the ApoE gene.  » Read more...

“Forget Alzheimer’s” is the title and the message of a book by German journalist Cornelia Stolze who is claiming to tell the “truth about a disease which isn’t one” (Cornelia Stolze, Vergiss Alzheimer. Die Wahrheit über eine Krankheit, die keine ist, Köln/Cologne 2011: Kiepenheuer & Witsch).

The book is strongly criticizing the handling of dementia, in particular Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in today’s medicine, pointing out the lack of adequate diagnostics and therapies and contrasting this sad reality with the often exaggerated promises of imminent breakthroughs by experts.  » Read more...

Joachim Müller-Jung in Frankfurter Allgemeines Zeitung (FAZ) this week deals with the ethic implications of non-invasive prenatal diagnosis, describing that a huge number of tests based on fetal DNA entering the mother’s blood stream is ready to enter the market. His recommendation is to start an immediate discussion about which tests should be applied and which ones should not.

Ulrich Bahnsen in Die ZEIT interviews Norbert Donner-Banzhoff, Professor at the University of Marburg’s Department of General Practice, Preventive and Rehabilitative Medicine. Donner-Banzhoff conducted a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal CMAJ investigating the influence of pharmaceutical advertising on the drug recommendations made in articles in 11 German journals that focus on medical education. Donner-Banzhoff and his team come to the conclusion that journals financed by advertisement from the pharma industry and given away for free almost exclusively recommended the use of specified drugs, whereas journals financed entirely with subscription fees tended to recommend against the use of the same drugs. In the interview, Donner-Banzhoff suggests that a lot of articles published in the free journals have been written by ghost writers and/or members of the pharmaceutical industry.  » Read more...

In Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), Manfred Lindinger takes up the issue whether nanotechnology poses danger to human health and the environment in an article and an interview with Jochen Flasbarth, president of the German Federal Environment Agency (Umweltbundesamt – UBA). Flasbarth points out that UBA’s nanotechnology study published last year, highlighting gaps in knowledge about potential health hazards, was misunderstood by the media and the public as a sweeping warning of all things nano. He also dismisses calls for introducing a label for products containing nanotechnology: “If there is no risk, we don’t need to put up a warning sign.”  » Read more...

Alzheimer-specialist Probiodrug AG last week not only obtained a new US patent covering the inhibition of the enzyme glutaminyl cyclase (QC) for the treatment of CNS diseases. The company also announced the appointment of Dr Claus Braestrup, former President & CEO of Lundbeck A/S to Chairman of the Supervisory Board and Prof Dr Lennart Mucke, Director of the Gladstone Institute of Neurological Disease in San Francisco, Calif. to its Scientific Advisory Board.  Moreover, the company was awarded the “IQ Innovationspreis Mitteldeutschland” by the Industrial Initiative for Central Germany for its innovative therapeutic strategy to combat Alzheimer’s disease. In May, Probiodrug hosted the PSP 2010 conference with more than 150 scientists to discuss its approach.