Alzheimer's Club

"Leon Thal, Director of the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at UCSD, heads 70-site consortium funded by National Institutes of Health

The Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), a federally established consortium directed by Leon Thal, M.D., Director of the Shiley-Marcos Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine, will receive $52 million over six years to conduct several new clinical trials on Alzheimer's disease, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced 17 October 2006. The award is the third renewal of a cooperative agreement between the NIH's National Institute on Aging (NIA) and UC San Diego, which coordinates the consortium of nearly 70 research sites in the United States and Canada.

Thal, Professor and Chair of the Department of Neurosciences at the UCSD School of Medicine, has led the ADCS since its inception in 1991.

"We are very excited to have the ability to test new therapies that may slow the rate of progression of this devastating disease," said Thal. "Given the rapid acquisition of knowledge in the field of Alzheimer's disease, we all remain hopeful that an effective treatment will be found within the next decade."

The purpose of the NIA award is to test drugs for their effectiveness in slowing down the progression or treating the symptoms of AD, as well as to investigate new methods for conducting dementia research.

"We have been able to bring together a larger universe of people studying therapies for Alzheimer's, and I think the group of studies we have developed for this phase of the study reflects new thinking in how to approach the disease," said Thal.

In the next six years funded by this award, researchers will focus on possible therapies aimed at affecting the peptide beta amyloid and the tau protein. Douglas R. Galasko, M.D., a physician scientist with the UCSD Shiley-Marcos ADRC, was one of the early scientists who determined that beta amyloid and tau could be measured in spinal fluid and were useful markers for Alzheimer's. It remains to be seen, however, whether plaques and tangles actually cause the disease or are byproducts of Alzheimer's... "

Source: $52 Million To Lead Alzheimer's Disease Study Received By UCSD. Medical News Today (22 Oct 2006) [Fulltext]