The Blackstonian sends love to the entire Nelson family and Black Business and Finance Icon JD Nelson
Turning Groundbreaking Research into Treatment
by: Dr. Dennis Selkoe
http://www.connectwithpartners.org/2012/04/25/turning-groundbreaking-research-into-treatment/
The steady rise in the elderly population around the world – and particularly in developed nations like ours – means that we must redouble our efforts to understand, treat and prevent Alzheimer’s disease.
For patients at the Partners hospitals, like Mr. J.D. Nelson and their families, the quest for a safe and effective disease-slowing treatment is truly urgent. And for society at large, enormous numbers of baby boomers are coming into the age when Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) occurs, usually after about 70 years. Here at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, my colleagues and I have been working hard for more than three decades to decipher the earliest biochemical abnormalities that occur in AD and try to find points to intervene.
This research has gone very well, and we and other physicians and scientists at Partners HealthCare have in many ways led the worldwide effort to learn enough about the biology of AD to intervene. A major part of our research centers on the so-called amyloid beta-protein, which builds up in thinking areas of the brain over many years, even decades, before patients experience the first memory symptoms.
My lab has figured out how the amyloid protein is made normally and how certain gene alterations that cause AD lead to too much of the protein in the brain. Other scientists here have focused squarely on imaging the brain with specialized scans and have translated some of our basic research on the mechanisms of AD into both diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. Partners is a center for clinical trials of experimental agents that could potentially slow and ultimately prevent the progression of AD.
In my long years of clinical and research work in the Department of Neurology at the Brigham, I have found it to be a truly exceptional environment in which to conduct breakthrough science. I can think of few missions in modern biomedicine that are more important than defeating Alzheimer’s for people like J.D. Nelson, and I remain passionately committed to helping make this happen.
