2017

by Joshua Grill, PhD March 9, 2017 Clinical trials: Trust the process Patients with Alzheimer’s disease and their families are desperate. Currently, no treatment can cure or even slow the course of this insidious and unrelenting brain disease. Scientists are desperate too. Many of us have committed our lives to improving the way we understand, diagnose, and treat this terrible disorder. A few weeks ago, I was asked to comment on an anecdote: a single patient whose own fat was liposuctioned and injected into his brain. I was told that the patient and his neurosurgeon were convinced that he had…

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by Joshua Grill, PhD February 15, 2017 Merck announced on Tuesday, February 14, that yet another clinical trial of a promising Alzheimer’s disease drug had failed. The trial was testing the safety and efficacy of verubecestat, an oral therapy that, at some doses, can reduce amyloid beta production by as much as 90% (Kennedy et al., Science 2016). The trial was being conducted in patients with mild-to-moderate dementia and was stopped because it was determined early that there was essentially no chance of showing a clinical benefit of the drug, compared to placebo. Perhaps importantly, based on the limited available…

The 23rd UCI Distinguished Lecture Series on Brain, Learning, and Memory hosted by UCI MIND, UCI School of Biological Sciences, and UCI Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory was held on February 7, 2017, at the Irvine Barclay Theatre. Dr. Ruth Benca, UCI MIND faculty member and Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Human Behavior, delivered a lecture on sleep and brain health to over 850 community members, the largest attendance for this series to date. Dr. Benca’s engaging presentation first addressed why human’s need sleep and some of the common disorders that interfere with the critical sleep…

  MedPage Today February 8, 2017 Learn more about a recent research study conducted by UCI MIND Co-Director, Dr. Joshua Grill, and colleagues to better understand patient and caregiver reactions to clinical amyloid imaging. Read more>

U.S. News & World Report February 6, 2017 "This is not a deal-breaker," co-author Charles Limoli, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine, said last fall. "I do not think that during the course of a trip to Mars and back the astronauts will come back with anything remotely similar to full-blown Alzheimer's. But more mild changes, more subtle changes − they would still be concerning, given the level of autonomy astronauts operate under and the amount of work they have to do." Read more>