Alzheimer's Association Update

he May 30–31 meeting of the Alzheimer’s Association esearch Roundtable convened more than 90 members nd invited guests in Washington, D.C., to explore the cademic/Industry Interface for Alzheimer’s Drug Disovery. Historically, academic laboratories with deep exertise in basic science led the field during the first wave f accelerating discovery in the 1970s and 1980s. Those fforts focused on understanding the basic biology of the rain and what goes wrong in Alzheimer’s disease. Inights gained identified a growing number of potential oints of intervention to treat symptoms or modify underying disease processes. Work leading to development of acrine (Cognex), approved in 1993 as the first drug to reat cognitive symptoms, took place chiefly in academic abs. Attracted by the steadily increasing number of potential herapeutic targets, pharmaceutical companies during the 990s began to develop major Alzheimer drug discovery nitiatives. Now, there is a rapidly expanding industryased clinical research enterprise, with new compounds ntering human clinical testing at an unprecedented rate. The Research Roundtable Academic/Industry Interface eeting explored how these two arenas can forge better orking relationships in the current drug discovery cliate to speed movement of potentially valuable discoveres from basic academic science laboratories to further evelopment and clinical testing under the aegis of the harmaceutical companies. Although there are some acaemic labs that excel in collecting and packaging basic cience data in ways that dovetail well with industry prorams, too often the two arenas operate as parallel unierses filled with mismatched expectations and missed pportunities. Key issues raised by industry representatives included he following: