American Alzheimer's plan milestones must be stren

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American Alzheimer's plan milestones must be strengthened to meet goal by 2025, experts say
Date: October 20, 2014
Source: Alzheimer's Association

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The U.S. Government has initiated a major effort to prevent and effectively treat Alzheimer's disease by 2025. However, a workgroup of nearly 40 Alzheimer's researchers and scientists says the research milestones in the U.S. Government's National Plan to Address Alzheimer's Disease must be broadened in scope, increased in scale, and adequately funded in order to successfully achieve this goal. A series of proposals by the workgroup to enlarge and strengthen the Plan are published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: the Journal of the Alzheimer's Association.

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One goal of the workgroup was to stimulate thinking about the Plan milestones at the upcoming NIA Alzheimer's Disease Research Summit and thereby enhance the discussion that will occur.


The recommendations in the newly-published article make it clear that, in order to meet the Plan's 2025 goal, the research effort for Alzheimer's disease must be enlarged in scale, expanded in scope, and better coordinated. According to the authors, what is needed are:

- More clinical trials, testing more drugs -- and more non-drug strategies -- against more targets, involving more people and more diverse populations, aimed at treating and preventing more types of symptoms.

- More basic research to discover and validate additional biomarkers and uncover new therapeutic targets.

- And a stronger research system and infrastructure with more data sharing and collaboration, conducted in a more interdisciplinary manner with increased emphasis on research to identify and translate effective treatments to medically accepted and widespread use.

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New Models
Given that current approaches to treatment have not yet resulted in effective new therapies, strategies are needed to re-examine existing paradigms and consider new conceptual models of Alzheimer's. The Alzheimer's Association convened Research Roundtables in 2006 and 2012 to explore mechanisms other than the dominant amyloid hypothesis that may contribute to neurodegeneration in Alzheimer's. Pathways identified that may offer additional therapeutic targets include those associated with aging, such as synaptic loss, decreased neurogenesis, cell death through internal mechanisms, and insulin resistance; and cell cycle events and other cellular processes such as inflammation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and alterations in various proteins.

Among the barriers to exploring these alternative hypotheses has been a lack of tools, infrastructure, and resources, especially for basic science and pre-clinical research. Recommended new research milestones for this area include:

- Creation of several mechanisms for funding a substantial training and research program on the basic biology of aging, vulnerabilities and diseases of the brain and nervous system, and the biological underpinnings of "super-aging."

- Convening a "think tank" to reexamine conceptual models of Alzheimer's disease beyond amyloid.

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