Governor Comes to Penn Medicine to Sign New Alzheimer’s Disease Executive Order

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett was on Penn Medicine’s campus last week to sign an Executive Order establishing the Pennsylvania Alzheimer’s Disease State Planning Committee. The committee will work to create a state plan to address the growing Alzheimer’s disease crisis in Pennsylvania. 

“This disease touches everyone in Pennsylvania,” said Pennsylvania Secretary of Aging Brian Duke, on hand for the event, held at Penn Medicine’s Smilow Center for Translational Research.

Secretary of Aging Brian Duke will serve as the chairperson of the committee that will examine the needs and research the trends of Pennsylvania’s Alzheimer’s population.

Penn Alzheimer’s Disease Center director John Trojanowski, MD, PhD, noted that “we hope this effort helps us get closer to a world without Alzheimer’s.”

The Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania’s Alzheimer’s Disease Center is one of two Pennsylvania centers funded by the National Institutes of Health for advanced research in Alzheimer’s disease. Through this funding, dramatic advances have been developed for more effective therapies in treating Alzheimer’s disease.

Representing the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center was Neil Resnick, MD, who appreciated the Governor’s and Commonwealth’s efforts to advance Alzheimer’s care, research and support. “Thank you, on behalf of every citizen, as Alzheimer’s impacts individuals, families, businesses,” he said.

More than 100 Alzheimer’s advocates, researchers and clinicians were present to witness the signing, with many from the Delaware Valley Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. Bob Marino, Chair, Pennsylvania Public Policy Coalition for the chapter, thanked state officials for efforts to lead and adopt Alzheimer’s legislation in Pennsylvania. He noted that the committee will provide important collaboration among all Alzheimer’s stakeholders across the state.

Currently, 1 in 12 people are affected by Alzheimer’s in Pennsylvania. Recent reports estimate that the number is expected to triple by 2050.

Incremental Clarity in Neurodegenerative Diseases

In December and early January, years of research unfolded in a few weeks time as papers published the work of Penn researchers and were able to deepen our understanding of a variety of conditions, both rare and common, hopefully getting closer to refining or finding effective treatments as a result.

For Parkinson’s patients, the latest research shows that the disease is not to blame for the impulse control symptoms one-fifth of Parkinson’s patients experience. Rather, researchers believe that treatments targeting the dopamine system may be a cause. Knowing the risk of the this treatment, physicians will be able to monitor and track patients over time, to see if the risk of impulsivity increases over the duration of treatment.

Also on the neurodegenerative front, neurologists have come up with a non-invasive way to parse out the difference between the two most common forms of dementia – Alzheimer’s disease and Frontotemporal Lobar Degeneration (FTLD). They are using an MRI technique to predict the ratio of two important markers for the diseases – the proteins total tau and beta-amyloid -  found in the cerebrospinal fluid. This builds off other work at Penn, where the initial test to measure the levels of these proteins was developed and tested. It’s among the growing list of tests developed and investigated here at Penn, including ASL-MRI, PET, and a recently FDA approved amyloid-beta tracer for PET scans.

The better the tests, the more hope and opportunity to place people in clinical trials that are most likely to reach the given target and hopefully curb disease. Earlier in December, another study from the Penn Memory Center found that, contrary to the trend of non-spousal Alzheimer’s caregivers, most caregivers that participate in clinical trials are spouses of the person with Alzheimer’s. Researchers hope that they can reduce barriers to make it easier for other caregivers to co-participate in these trials with their loved ones who are living with Alzheimer’s.

These incremental gains in combination show a ramped up pace for neurodegenerative diseases, and in Neurology in general. Now, the focus is on translating the advances into clinical care, as soon as the research is shown to be effective and accurate, providing more hopeful momentum for these devastating conditions.

“To the most deserving.”

On November 16, Virginia M.Y. Lee, PhD, MBA, and John Q. Trojanowski, MD, PhD, both professors of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, were given the John Scott Award, Philadelphia’s most prestigious scientific award, in a ceremony held at the American Philosophical Society.

The award, established by a gift from Edinburgh chemist John Scott in the early 1800s, is one of the oldest science prizes in the United States.

Penn Study Links Protein with Spread and Cell Death in Parkinson’s Disease

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Parkinson's

The latest study, coming out of Penn’s Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research, published in the latest issue of Science, is garnering attention from scientists, advocacy groups and news outlets alike.

From the Penn Medicine press release:

In short, the Penn researchers found that, in healthy mice, a single injection of synthetic, misfolded α-Syn fibrils led to a cell-to-cell transmission of pathologic α-Syn proteins and the formation of Parkinson’s α-Syn clumps known as Lewy bodies in interconnected regions of the brain. Their findings appear in this week’s issue of Science. The team was led by senior author Virginia M.-Y Lee, PhD, director of the Center for Neurodegenerative Disease Research (CNDR) and professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, and first author Kelvin C. Luk, PhD, research assistant professor in the CNDR.

The major significance of the paper is that it resolves the long-standing controversy about the role of α-Syn Lewy bodies in the degeneration of substantia nigra dopamine neurons, thereby sharpening the focus on Lewy bodies as targets for discovery of disease modifying therapy for Parkinson patients.

Drs. Lee and Luk help explain the study here, in this video:

News outlets including the Philadelphia Inquirer, The Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, Discover and Bloomberg, as well as the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s FoxFeed blog are also sharing the news.

As the Penn Medicine press release notes, “The team is now working on an antibody therapy in these mouse models to stop propagation of rogue misfolded α-Syn. What’s more, both the cell culture and the mouse models will facilitate the identification of novel targets for PD therapy.”

We’ll post updates to any additional coverage here. Stay tuned!

Thank You Breakfast Brings Hope to Families Participating in Penn Memory Center Research

The 6^th Annual Penn Memory Center Thank You Breakfast drew a packed crowd to the Inn at Penn’s Woodlands Ballroom on October 20, 2012. The annual invitation-only breakfast thanks research participants for their contribution to Penn’s Alzheimer’s disease research.

Your research is wonderful and your sharing it like this is unbelievably generous and much appreciated.

Over 200 research participants along with their family members and guests enjoyed breakfast before attending presentations on the latest updates in Alzheimer’s disease and the results of Alzheimer’s disease research done at the Penn Memory Center.

I find this program great. It gives me some hope, and learning about the disease is very informative. Thank you for all you do.

Members of the Penn Alzheimer’s Disease team – including Penn ADCC director John Trojanowski, MD, PhD, Penn Memory Center director Steven E. Arnold, MD, Penn Memory Center clinicians David Wolk, MD, and Jason Karlawish, MD, and Felicia Greenfield, LCSW, Penn Memory Center Associate Director for Clinical and Research Operations – each presented the latest results from research studies as well as updates on Penn Memory Center programs and upcoming research opportunities.

The presentations concluded with an open question and answer session. Guests’ questions ranged from how biomarker results are used in clinical practice to the current and future state of Alzheimer’s disease research.

This is a much appreciated event in recognition of the efforts of those of us who want to help.

To learn more about research opportunities at the Penn Memory Center, visit www.pennadc.org/research.