Small trial of Bemdaneprocel, which aims to replace dopamine-producing neurons, raises hope for treatment The loss of dopamine-producing neurons with Parkinson’s causes symptoms including a tremor, slow movements and muscle stiffness. Photograph: David Davies/PA Scientists have reported early success in a trial of an experimental cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease, raising hope for patients. Bemdaneprocel therapy is at an early stage, and the year-long trial involved just 12 patients, but the positive outcome is viewed as significant after decades of setbacks in the hunt for an effective treatment. Developed by BlueRock therapeutics, a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company Bayer, it…

UCI MIND faculty member and professor of pathology, Elizabeth Head, PhD, is quoted in last week's Alzforum article about Alzheimer's disease immunotherapies and the high rates of cerebrovascular pathology in people with Down syndrome.   To read the story, visit Alzforum from August 25th. Dr. Elizabeth Head

Downtown Los Angeles seen in the hazy distance. Photo: Caroline Brehman/Zuma Press Smoggy air can hurt your health even after the smoke has cleared. But you can lower your risk. Some animal research suggests that fine particles can make their way into the brain, says Masashi Kitazawa, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health at the University of California, Irvine. He recently co-wrote a study that found that older mice who were exposed to polluted air were at an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease than those who got purified air. Even the younger mice who were exposed to polluted…

More Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders sought for studies on aging UCI’s Joshua Grill is one of three principal investigators for the National Institute on Aging grant that will fund CARE 2.0. Steve Zylius / UCI August 2, 2023—With a $16 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, the University of California, San Francisco and the University of California, Irvine will work with community partners to improve the representation of Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander adults in research on aging, caregiving, and Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. The new project builds on a previous effort…

Quest Diagnostics recently announced the launch of a direct-to-consumer blood test to detect amyloid plaques in the brain. The test examines the ratio of Ab42/Ab40 in the plasma. Based on the Quest website, the test results are provided in numeric fashion, as well as based on categories of low, intermediate, and high risk of amyloid presence in the brain (with lower numbers on the plasma Ab ratio associated with higher likelihood of amyloid being present in the brain). As can be seen on the website, there is a high degree of overlap on test results among those with elevated compared…

Barrington and Vickie Riley pose at the Emory University Brain Health Center in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., July 12, 2023. The Riley's, who have been married more than 35 years, participated in the Charlie and Harriet Shaffer Cognitive Empowerment Program. Barrington Riley has mild cognitive impairment. REUTERS/Alyssa Pointer Dr. Joshua Grill, a University of California, Irvine, Alzheimer's researcher, who collaborated with Eisai and other researchers to analyze two trials for Leqembi and two for an earlier anti-amyloid drug, also found that Black, Hispanic and Asian people were more likely to be screened out of clinical trials because the amount of amyloid…

From cutting-edge research on Alzheimer’s disease to an innovative effort to include environmental justice and community engagement in climate and sustainability science research and education, University of California, Irvine scholars, scientists and physicians are blazing new paths to help change the world. And their impact keeps growing. In fiscal 2022-23, which ended June 30, UCI received the most research funding in campus history: $653 million in grants and contracts. Awards from federal and state agencies, leading foundations and forward-thinking companies rose by 12.7 percent over the 2021-22 total of $580 million, reflecting strong support for UCI’s top-ranked faculty, first-rate facilities,…

UCI MIND researchers, Christian Salazar, PhD, MPH, and Maria Corona, PhD, have been awarded a UCI ICTS 2023 Campus-Community Researcher Incubator Award for their project, "Improving Knowledge and Awareness of Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias among Promotores in Santa Ana, California.”  The team will partner with the OC based, Latino Health Access to train and support community health workers, called promotores, to increase awareness of dementia in Hispanic and Latinx communities.

Results were presented on Monday from the first-of-its kind Anti-Amyloid treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer’s (A4) Study. The A4 was a more than 10-year project to conduct one of the first and largest “preclinical” Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials, testing a compound for potential disease-slowing properties before memory problems begin in a population deemed at risk based on an amyloid PET scan biomarker test. Unfortunately, the drug studied, solanezumab, did not slow memory worsening compared to placebo in this trial. This was surprising given the previous findings in which solanezumab had appeared to have very small but seemingly real effects in symptomatic…

Results were presented on Monday for TRAILBLAZER-ALZ-2, a registration trial of the monoclonal antibody donanemab, which was previously announced as positive. The data were highly convincing that donanemab has a significant effect of slowing disease progression in Alzheimer’s disease and almost certainly points to a full clinical approval for the drug by the FDA in the future. The primary analytic group under study in this TRAILBLAZER study (there are several different clinical trials of donanemab sponsored by Eil Lilly under the moniker of “TRAILBLAZER”) was patients with “low-to-medium tau burden,” assessed with a tau PET scan. Unlike the previous trial…