News

The University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine has joined a nationwide consortium of researchers looking for biological factors that could help predict blood-vessel-related health conditions, including dementia and Alzheimer’s. Six institutions besides USC are part of the initiative that the National Institutes of Health started two years ago. Scientists…

Texas A&M’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine  and Celltex Therapeutics are teaming up to evaluate whether inflammation-fighting sacs that stem cells release could be used to treat Alzheimer’s. The fluid-filled sacs, which scientists call vesicles, transport material inside a cell. But cells often release them, and when this happens, they…

Results from a Phase 2 clinical trial show that Nuplazid (pimavanserin) can safely treat, but possibly in the short-term only, symptoms of psychosis in Alzheimer’s patients, a study looking at data from that U.K. trial reports. An accompanying commentary, however, raised concerns about the clinical meaningfulness of these results and findings…

In another blow to hopes for an effective Alzheimer’s treatment, Merck announced that it is stopping its Phase 3 clinical study testing verubecestat (MK-8931) in patients with early stage disease. No specific reason was given, but lack of effectiveness in data compiled to date is a likely cause. The decision follows a…

The harmful tau protein associated with Alzheimer’s appears in one place in the brain, then spreads, rather than showing up in several places independently, new imaging techniques show. This finding suggests that preventing tau from spreading may be a good way of stopping the progression of the disease, a University…

CTD Holdings and the Kerwin Research Center are discussing working together on the use of cholesterol-lowering therapies called cyclodextrins as possible treatments for Alzheimer’s disease. Cyclodextrins are non-toxic compounds made up of sugar molecules that can bind with and extract cholesterol. Preclinical-trial studies in Niemann-Pick disease and Alzheimer’s show they can…

Three Phase 3 clinical studies have failed to reproduce previously reported benefits of adding investigational idalopirdine to a background therapy of cholinesterase inhibitors. The three randomized trials detected no improvements in cognition among mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease patients treated this way. The study, “Effect of Idalopirdine as Adjunct…

The gut microbiome is increasingly seen as a key player in serious and chronic neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s — for reasons that are being suggested and explained, but not quite named. Now, researchers propose a term — “mapranosis” — to capture the process by which amyloid proteins produced…

Loss of synapses, or communication-conveying connections between one nerve cell and another, does not explain the early cognitive impairment in Alzheimer’s patients, researchers concluded. The study, “Moderate decline in select synaptic markers in the prefrontal cortex (BA9) of patients with Alzheimer’s disease at various cognitive stages,” appeared in the…

Takeda Pharmaceutical Company and Zinfandel Pharmaceuticals have brought an early end to a Phase 3 clinical trial after their Alzheimer’s therapy pioglitazone failed to prevent the development of mild cognitive impairment. The decision came less than a year after the partners completed enrollment in the TOMMORROW trial (NCT01931566). An interim analysis…