UCI MIND faculty member and psychiatrist, David Sultzer, MD, has been awarded a $12 million dollar grant by the NIA to test a novel prevention treatment. He, along with two other Southern California researchers will test an experimental vaccine to prevent Alzheimer's disease. The Orange County Register covered the story. Read the article here.
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On February 17, 2023, a bipartisan group of Senators sent the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Javier Baccera, and the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, a letter requesting that CMS reconsider their decision to require Coverage with Evidence Determination (CED) that was levied after the accelerated approval of aducanumab. The letter followed a similar request from the Alzheimer’s Association, made in December 2022. The CED decision significantly limited access to aducanumab and other monoclonal antibodies (should they be approved), requiring that coverage would be granted only if Medicare beneficiaries were enrolled in…
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Dr. Mathew Blurton-Jones UCI MIND faculty member and Professor of Neurobiology and Behavior, Mathew Blurton-Jones Jones, PhD, has been awarded Early Career Innovator/Emerging Innovation of the Year by UCI Beall Applied Innovation. Read the full article here.
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Frontotemporal dementia (FTD) is a form of dementia that typically affects individuals in their 50s and 60s. It is therefore, commonly referred to as young onset dementia. Clinically, FTD can present in two ways; some patients present with behavioral impairment and are referred to as behavioral variant FTD (bvFTD). The other main presentation involves language decline and is called primary progressive aphasia (PPA). Both conditions start insidiously and accurate diagnosis can be a challenge, especially at early stages of the disease. In bvFTD, patients can present with apathy, lack of empathy, increased appetite, preference for sweet tooth, new onset of…
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In July 2022, students from Santa Ana and Anaheim high schools learn about neuroanatomy as part of the UCI MIND Beall Scholar Program to Inspire Future STEM Leaders. Support from Joan and Don Beall will allow for the program to continue. UCI MIND Irvine, Calif., Jan. 31, 2023 — Sustained support from philanthropists Joan and Don Beall to the the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders will allow for the continuation of an educational outreach program in Orange County high schools and the creation of a new research award for an early career researcher. “We are grateful for the…
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UCI School of Medicine highlighted innovative research performed in the lab of Xiangmin Xu, PhD, UCI MIND faculty member and professor and Chancellor’s Fellow of anatomy and neurobiology in the UCI School of Medicine. Dr. Xu and colleagues have found that sporadic Alzheimer's disease can be modeled in a non-murine rodent called the Chilean degu. "Our findings, taken together, show spontaneous AD-like correlative phenotypes in cognitive performance and neuropathology in aged, outbred degus. This supports that aged degus are a useful and practical model of natural sporadic AD." Xiangmin Xu Read the article in the February edition of the UCI School…
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In a somewhat surprising move, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has declined to grant accelerated approval to Eli Lilly’s donanemab Read the full press release from Eli Lilly here Like aducanumab and lecanemab, which were previously granted accelerated approval by the FDA, donanemab is a monoclonal antibody treatment against the beta amyloid protein that accumulates in the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease. Eli Lilly published very promising results for donanemab in 2021, which included demonstration that donanemab could lower amyloid levels in the brain of people with mild cognitive impairment and mild dementia (the basis for…
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The recent FDA approval of lecanemab has generated a lot of buzz in recent days and UCI MIND director, Joshua Grill, PhD has been asked to comment in various highly visible media outlets including the Washington Post and today, in National Geographic.
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Only Mutants. While wild-type human microglia perished in mice after two months of CSF1R inhibitor treatment (left), G795A microglia expanded to fill the entire brain (green, right). UCI MIND faculty member and professor, Mathew Blurton-Jones, PhD, is featured in AlzForum for his lab's recent collaborative work on creating a new strain of resistant microglia. Lead author and graduate student in the Blurton-Jones lab, Jean Paul Chadarevian, along with collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania published their innovative work in Journal of Experimental Medicine in the December 2022 issue. Read the full article here >
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January 6, 2023 – Today, as expected, the US Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to lecanemab, a monoclonal antibody against the beta amyloid protein that accumulates in the brain of people with Alzheimer’s disease. Lecanemab was approved on the basis of the treatment’s demonstrated effect of lowering levels of brain amyloid, as measured by a type of brain scan known as positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. Lecanemab is now approved for the treatment of patients with mild cognitive impairment or mild dementia, and should be used in patients in whom that same amyloid PET brain scan (or measures…
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