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Letter to the Editor re: Nexus of Cancer & Alzheimer's
Author(s) -
Carrillo Maria C.,
Fillit Howard,
Ganguli Mary,
Knopman David,
Shineman Diana,
Snyder Heather M.
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2017.03.006
Subject(s) - library science , public health , gerontology , medicine , family medicine , pathology , computer science
In the letter by Dr. Louie entitled, “Comments on the ‘nexus’ meeting report re: dementia and cancer,” the author outlines a significant challenge in biomedical research: communicating knowledge among disparate disciplines and disease specialties. As the readers of the Journal appreciate, Alzheimer’s disease is a growing international public health problem. Treatments and interventions to help these individuals are not coming fast enough, and we are obligated as a community to do everything in our power to advance research at an accelerated pace. In recent years, we have seen nearly a doubling of on-going clinical trials in Alzheimer’s disease (Phase 1 through Phase 3). Yet, this pace is not fast enough for those families living with this disease every day; we still do not have an effective therapy to stop or slow the disease progression. It is clear that oncology research is significantly more mature than Alzheimer’s research. This is in terms of the state of research, understanding of the disease, potential therapeutic targets, and on-going clinical trials for new therapies. Cancer research saw a surge last century, whereas more than 95% of what we know about Alzheimer’s disease today has been gained from literature published since 1980. Furthermore, we wholly agree with the author’s comments regarding the stark contrast of effective therapies available in the two conditions. Alzheimer’s disease currently has no intervention that can stop or slow its progression, whereas cancer has numerous options to extend life and, in some instances, eliminate cancer progression from an individual. The “Nexus of Cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease” think tank in May 2016, convened by the Alzheimer’s Association and by Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, was a start of the conversation to examine areas of potential overlap between these two conditions. As the author notes, there is an opportunity to continue this discussion to explore clinical research in diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases, such as effective study recruitment strategies and study site infrastructure, and apply those successes to the future of Alzheimer’s disease clinical trials. A clear example