“Towards Precision Medicine Therapies and Biomarkers for Neurodegenerative Diseases”Dr. Nilüfer Ertekin-Taner, Professor and Enterprise Chair of Mayo Clinic’s Department of Neuroscience, explains the very latest research and treatments for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases before an April 2, 2024 meeting of The Economic Club of Florida.

Show Notes (for complete Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/)

Dr. Ertekin-Taner gave the club some shocking figures on dementia and Alzheimer’s disease:

• $305 billion spent on the diseases
• 600,000 cases in Florida alone
• 12.5% of Florida residents over 65 suffer, the second highest in the country
• 18 billion hours of caretaker time

At Mayo Florida, she has more than 200 investigators working in her lab and supervises more than 250-scientists and trainees at the Florida campus.

“Our collective mission is to find cures and diagnostics for currently incurable and undiagnosable neurologic illnesses, like dementias, like Alzheimer's disease,” she said. “Dementia is the umbrella term, it means a person is having problems in their thinking, and it's interfering with their day-to-day life.”

She pointed out that while Alzheimer’s was first identified more than 100-years ago, it has only recently become recognized clinically. It was thought to be a normal part of aging, but now we know it is not.

Dr. Ertekin-Taner and her lab are looking for cures not only for Alzheimer’s but also Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP), a disease that progresses faster and at a younger age than Alzheimer’s.

The investigators use genetics to get information about possible risk factors, but it does not give specific information.

“Basically, think of it like the general address. There is a fire so the firefighters are called, and we say there's a fire in this general region. That's the kind of information that these kinds of studies give us. But they don't tell us exactly which house is on fire. And they don’t tell us what caused the fire.”

While diagnosis has gotten better, there are still few cures.

“The answer again, lies in in the economy. The cost of putting a single drug on the market is on average over a billion dollars. So pharmaceutical companies cannot commit unless those drug targets are de-risked for them. And the groups that are going to really identify those drug targets and de-risk it for big pharmaceutical companies are academic groups. Places like Mayo Clinic and other places.”

Dr. Ertekin-Taner said Alzheimer’s, PSP, and the other forms of dementia differ from person to person. While Alzheimer’s is now treated as a single disease, she says it should be treated similarly to cancer with specific therapies for specific patients. Doctors need to apply precision medicine, which is diagnosing and treating the right patient with the right treatment at the right time.

Genes are not all researchers look to.

“There's also a big emphasis now on environment, the exposed zone. Where you were born, what you eat, what are your other risk factors, and education? What are the things that enrich your brain, and what are those that take away from your brain? Their relationship with genes matters. And this combination either puts you at risk for diseases... (for the rest of the Show Notes, please visit https://economic-club.com/podcasts-and-summaries/) A TeleDirections podcast