Maria Figueiredo-Pereira on Development and characterization of a new Parkinson's disease model resulting from impaired autophagy.

COMMENT Besides autophagy, there is another important pathway for regulated protein degradation, i.e., the ubiquitin/proteasome pathway. It is important to consider the role played by both pathways in maintaining intracellular protein homeostasis. I would like to

Sascha Weggen on Safety and Tolerability of the γ-Secretase Inhibitor Avagacestat in a Phase 2 Study of Mild to Moderate Alzheimer Disease.

COMMENT This study describing Phase 2 results of the γ-secretase inhibitor avagacestat comes down to two facts: clear evidence of toxicity at the two higher doses—even with the relatively short treatment period of 24 weeks—and no evidence of target engagement at

PAPER Tashiro Y, Urushitani M, Inoue H, Koike M, Uchiyama Y, Komatsu M, Tanaka K, Yamazaki M, Abe M, Misawa H, Sakimura K, Ito H, Takahashi R

Motor Neuron-specific Disruption of Proteasomes, but Not Autophagy, Replicates Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis.

J Biol Chem. 2012 Dec 14;287(51):42984-94. PubMed: 23095749

Johan Lundkvist

Sweden

Raghu Ramayya

Chennai, India

CTE Needs Consensus on Lifetime Diagnosis

CONFERENCE COVERAGE 2012-11-27 Conference Coverage When a new disease emerges, clinicians grapple early on with how to diagnose it. This is true for chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), the degenerative tauopathy that develops in some people after they receive a blow to the head in

Daniel Davis on Drug policy for an aging population--the European Medicines Agency's geriatric medicines strategy.

COMMENT This regulatory perspective paper points out that trials are frequently done in younger populations than they are prescribed to. It advises against increasing stratification, "confounder cleansing," and the general trend to test drugs in more na

Daniel Davis

University of Cambridge

Dennis Selkoe on CTAD: New Data on Sola, Bapi, Spark Theragnostics Debate

COMMENT Dr. Imbimbo’s perspective has been voiced before by a minority of AD investigators who believe that lowering brain Aβ levels in various ways would perforce be detrimental to the patient’s cognitive status. There is certainly nothing wrong with revisiting

PAPER Pariente A, Fourrier-Réglat A, Bazin F, Ducruet T, Dartigues JF, Dragomir A, Perreault S, Moore N, Moride Y

Effect of treatment gaps in elderly patients with dementia treated with cholinesterase inhibitors.

Neurology. 2012 Mar 27;78(13):957-63. PubMed: 22422894

Bruno Vellas on Drug policy for an aging population--the European Medicines Agency's geriatric medicines strategy.

COMMENT It is true that most of the patients included in drug trials do not reflect the general elderly population. In the Gerontopole (Gillette-Guyonnet and Vellas, 2012), we have to screen almost 50 Alzheimer's patients in order to have one included in cur

Dominic Holland on Drug policy for an aging population--the European Medicines Agency's geriatric medicines strategy.

COMMENT The data presented in the Perspective article by Cerreta et al. show a clear disjuncture between the ages of those who are prescribed cardiovascular drugs and participants enrolled in clinical trials to test such candidate drugs. The authors rightly argue

Dominic Holland

University of California, San Diego
La Jolla, United States

Bruno Vellas

University of Toulouse
France

PAPER Cerreta F, Eichler HG, Rasi G

Drug policy for an aging population--the European Medicines Agency's geriatric medicines strategy.

N Engl J Med. 2012 Nov 22;367(21):1972-4. PubMed: 23171092