News

A researcher at the Jackson Laboratory (JAX) in Maine has been awarded a five-year, $5.4 million grant to investigate why genetic mutations linked to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) — and found people with a family history of the disease — don’t always affect memory and cognition. Assistant professor Catherine Kaczorowski received the award from the National Institute on Aging,…

Axovant Sciences said its Phase 3 MINDSET clinical trial of the investigational therapy intepirdine did not meet the study’s primary goal. In the trial, patients received 35 mg of intepirdine and were assessed at 24 weeks for any changes in cognition scores or measures of daily living, using two tests: ADAS-Cog (Alzheimer’s…

Certain personality traits — like high levels of neuroticism and low conscientiousness — may be linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, finds a study published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry. But people don’t develop these traits are during pre-symptomatic stages of the disease,…

Scientists are coming closer to understanding how the gene variant apolipoprotein E4 (ApoE4) raises the risk of Alzheimer’s disease. Blocking ApoE4 — one of several variants of the ApoE gene — in the brain may prevent cell death and inflammation and lead to a treatment for Alzheimer’s, concludes a study, “ApoE4…

AgeneBio has obtained a National Institute on Aging grant to conduct a Phase 3 clinical trial of AGB101 (levetiracetam), a compound intended to prevent people with mild memory impairment from developing Alzheimer’s disease. The agency, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has been backing the potential therapy’s development for…

Pain Therapeutics has received a $1.8 million research grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support the development of a technology to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in early stages based on a simple blood test. AD is a progressive disorder, meaning it slowly destroys memory and cognitive skills.

Biohaven and the Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS) have jointly launched a Phase 2 clinical trial for the investigational drug trigriluzole, a glutamate modulating candidate that could potentially improve symptoms in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Preclinical studies and post-mortem human Alzheimer’s studies suggest that abnormalities in the…

Older people — ages 60 to 75 — in good cognitive health but with two copies of the “risk gene” for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are being asked to take part in Generation Study, a collaborative and global research project investigating treatments that might stop the disease from developing. Two copies of the APOE4 gene are inherited, one from…

Researchers have found a connection between an infection with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s. The study, “Toxoplasma Modulates Signature Pathways of Human Epilepsy, Neurodegeneration & Cancer,” was published in the journal Nature. One of the major challenges in medicine today is finding a cure for non-contagious diseases…

White women whose genes put them at risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease are more likely than white men with similar risk genes to be diagnosed between the ages of 65 and 75, a study drawing on patient data in North America and Europe reports. Overall, between the ages of 55 and 85, Caucasian…