Scientific American: "We Need New Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease"

[Webdog]

Scientific American article on the search for an Alzheimer's biomarker, and how both the FDA and Bill Gates have made finding an inexpensive blood test for Alzheimer's a priority.

We Need New Biomarkers for Alzheimer's Disease
They're essential to coming up with better treatments, and a new initiative could provide them
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/we-need-new-biomarkers-for-alzheimers-disease/

Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States, and the only one that can’t be prevented or slowed. Unlike cancer and heart disease, we currently lack both the tools to easily diagnose Alzheimer’s and the medications to effectively treat it.

In sharp contrast to other illnesses, and despite many efforts, huge expense and hundreds of clinical trials, no new treatments for Alzheimer's disease have been approved in the last 16 years.

However, recent studies on the value of PET amyloid brain scans, supported by CMS, have shown that “dementia expert” doctors practicing in the community misdiagnose Alzheimer’s disease in about 50 percent of cases and change their management and treatment of patients nearly 70 percent of the time when this test is used. An inexpensive blood test, covered by insurance, which can be performed in any clinical setting, would have a big impact on patients and their caregivers.

That is why the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF) is honored to partner with Bill Gates, the Dolby family, the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation and others to create Diagnostics Accelerator, an initiative that advances the development of novel biomarkers from blood and other peripheral fluids and tissue to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Using the biomarker specific model of precision medicine, we will be able to predict more accurately which treatment and prevention strategies will work in different at-risk populations of people who have Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia, as we can now do in cancer, heart disease and other chronic diseases of aging and old age.