"US adds $33m to trial of new drug to prevent Alzheimer’s" by Pam Belluck | New York Times, September 19, 2013
NEW YORK — In a significant effort to discover a treatment to prevent Alzheimer’s disease, the federal government on Wednesday announced a $33.2 million grant for a project that will test a drug on people considered at greatest risk for developing the most common form of the disease.
The grant, part of the government’s national Alzheimer’s plan, will help finance a large clinical trial to test a treatment on people 60 to 75 years old who do not have any symptoms of the disease but do have two copies of a gene known to greatly increase the risk of getting it.
It is the largest federal grant to date to test a drug designed to prevent Alzheimer’s in people without symptoms, said Laurie Ryan, program director for Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials at the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health.
In announcing the grant Wednesday, Dr. Richard J. Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, said the government was “investing a great deal of hope” in prevention research, aiming to “intervene early in the course of Alzheimer’s disease, well before the onset of symptoms.”
“We know that Alzheimer’s-related brain changes take place years, even decades, before symptoms appear,” Hodes said. “That really may be the optimal window for drugs that delay progression or prevent the disease altogether.”
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But government isn't going there. Instead, they are telling us it's genetic (your fault) and they are going to cut some checks to pharmaceutical companies to produce a drug you don't need.
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The researchers haven’t chosen the drug to be tested, but it will be a treatment that attacks amyloid, a protein that accumulates in plaques in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.
Expected to begin in 2015, the project will ultimately cost more than $100 million, most of which is expected to be financed by the pharmaceutical industry, with some money from nonprofit sources, Reiman said.
Drug-testing will involve people in several locations, most in the United States.
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Also see: Patient starts conversation on Alzheimer’s
