Neurotherapeutics Presents Special Issue on New Treatments for Alzheimer's Disease

The issue coincides with the 2008 Alzheimer's Association International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease (ICAD), being held at McCormick Place, Chicago, July 26 to 31, 2008. Rudolph E. Tanzi, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts General Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease and Massachusetts General Hospital, is a Guest Editor. “In this issue of Neurotherapeutics, we have enlisted several experts in the field to review the most promising new therapeutics currently under development for the treatment and prevention of AD,” Dr. Tanzi writes in the introductory editorial.

The eleven papers in the special issue highlight promising therapeutic targets for Alzheimer's disease, providing an update on efforts to develop treatments. Given the central role of amyloid ß peptide (Aß) in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease, cerebral accumulations of Aß are a major focus. The lead article in the issue looks at techniques for measuring the effects of disease-modifying therapies on cerebral Aß levels—including the key question of whether they correlate with cognitive performance.

Clinical trials aimed at all of these therapeutic targets are underway. In his editorial, Dr. Tanzi expresses “cautious optimism and high hopes” that these trials may lead to new therapeutic approaches to Alzheimer's disease. He concludes, “With several active clinical trials and other promising drugs now headed toward the clinic, the hope is that we will soon have novel AD therapeutics that successfully slow or reverse disease progress in AD.”

The full text of Dr. Bush's and Dr. Tanzi's paper on the metal hypothesis has been made available free of charge at http://www.neurotherapeutics.org/content/editorschoice. As always, subscribers and ASENT members can access the full content of each issue of Neurotherapeutics at the journal website, www.neurotherapeutics.org. Institutional subscribers can access the journal through ScienceDirect, http://www.ScienceDirect.com.

Visitors to ICAD 2008 in Chicago are encouraged to stop by the Elsevier display in the Expo Hall (Booth #710) to see the special issue on “Novel Therapeutics for Alzheimer's Disease” and to learn about options for becoming a Neurotherapeutics subscriber.