In this episode, Steve reads and discusses an article by Jason Bork titled "Alzheimer's, a Disease to be Forgotten?," featured in the Indianapolis Business Journal's special supplement, Biofutures. Steve shares his off-the-cuff impressions and insights on Bork's article, which discusses the current state of Alzheimer's research, the challenges of clinical trials, and the progress made with recent FDA-approved drugs. He also reflects on the personal impact of Alzheimer's and the importance of ongoing research in Indiana. Tune in to hear Steve's thoughts and learn more about the advancements and hurdles in the fight against Alzheimer's.

By the way, Biofutures happens to be the official magazine of the Indiana LIfe Sciences Association - Indiana Life Sciences Association – Connecting Indiana's bioscience industry.

The article is on page 7 of the magazine: Indianapolis Business Journal BioFutures Magazine

Let me know what you think of the article and of my take.

MUSIC:

Acid Jazz-Kevin MacLeod used under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

TRANSCRIPT:

You are about to experience the life science effect season 2 brought to you by our presenting sponsor, BPM associate. Extraordinary people's relationships that matter, important change for a better world. The joy of belonging. Life, science, leadership. Hey, everybody, it's Steve. Thanks for listening to the live science effect. And today we have another installment of active ingredient. In which I read an article and give you my off the cuff off the top of my head impressions and I interview myself. So today's article is by Jason C Bork and it's called Alzheimer's, a disease to be forgotten and it's in the special supplement in the Indianapolis Business Journal. Called BioFutures. It's the official magazine of the Indiana Life Sciences Association. I'll try to find an online version of it to link for you guys, but this came with my my hard copy issue of. The IBJ, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to get you guys an online version, but I'll try to find something. So what caught my eye? Well, first of all, it's by Jason Bork, who is actually a colleague who has been on the show before. I interviewed Jason 5 or 6 years ago. He's been very active in Alzheimer's Research as a project. Manager helping move clinical trials forward, helping to move those studies forward for W. Is. A very elusive disease to treat. It's also a mysterious disease, so from the article. So the thing that caught my eye obviously is Jason Bourque. A friend of mine, and we talked about Alzheimer's before this article is about the. Current state of affairs with Alzheimer's. So how did it hit me? So my first reaction was I was a little surprised by some of the fact. I know that Alzheimer's is a terrible, terrible disease. Anyone who has personally experienced it knows that it's it's not great. I have not personally experienced it that I know of, and I hope I don't. But if I ever do, I know it's when you're a loved one of someone or you are someone with Alzheimer's. Terrible, terrible disease and it affects over 7 million Americans, it turned out. And I I just didn't realize it was that many. And it's growing as the population gets older and. You know more and more people through modern medicine and modern healthcare, people are living longer. And if you live longer, the incidence of Alzheimer's is growing up. Does this one feel like a big deal or just noise? Well, it feels like a big deal to me because what Jason is pointing out here is it's still elusive and it has been for the last 20 or so year, but years or more, they've been trying to find any sort of treatment for the either to slow it down. Or to prevent it in the first place to reverse it to reverse the disease. All of these things have been elusive, but there have been some recent FDA approved drugs. It's showing some progress. The drugs are slowing the disease progression by targeting amyloid buildup in the brain, which is a type of plaque that tends to build up and. That that's sort of the treatment then targets that directly, right? The other thing I did not know that surprised me and and and makes this a big deal is clinical trials have major hurdles the it's high costs, a lot of costs going into drugs that don't eventually get approved or that fail the screening so screening. Sale rates are up to 95% in some of these studies, which? Means you you spend all the money to recruit and get the folks in and then they fail the screening. It makes it really tough. If it's 95%, that makes it really hard to get a good population. And Jason points out representative population folks who may be disadvantaged or don't have healthcare. They end up with Alzheimer's too, and so they are not as well represented in some of these clinical trials. How does it connect to what I'm seeing or doing well? I live in Indiana, as you all know, and Indiana really is playing a major role. Jason points out the through our universities in Indiana, Indiana University, especially hospitals. IU Health is a major. It's a teaching hospital and it's a research hospital. As well as Eli Lilly and Company and other biotech startups in town have partnerships. So it really connects to my backyard and I'm in the industry. So I'd really like to see see us be able to help get some of these treatment. What would I like to hear someone else say about this? Well, I always pay attention when Jason talks about Alzheimer's. He's way smarter than me on this stuff. We're both project managers and we both our skill set is to manage projects, but he knows so much. I talked about manufacturing capacity a lot on this show. Because that's, I know manufacturing. I've done some. Research projects, but it's very few and it's been a long time. Jason is really smart on that stuff. But what I'd like to hear is there's this ongoing debate of are these recent drugs? They have risks that come with them. Side effects are the side effects worth the slowing down of the disease? I did ask Jason that once and he said his personal view is if you get more time with the person being who The Who, you know, you know, with Alzheimer's, people end up. Forgetting people, they forget their loved ones. They become a different person in some ways. If you could get more time with that person and that person gets more time to be who they are and who they've always been, he said. That's worth it to him. But he understands the debate. It's like, but there are these side effects, you know. That and I'm. I'm not sure what the side effects are. He it was a passing conversation. I can get a chance to ask him, but maybe we'll have him back on the show and we'll talk more about Alzheimer's and progress being made and what is expected over over the next few generations. Jason ends the article by saying, hey, maybe we're only a generation or two away from Alzheimer's being a thing of the past. What a wonderful world that would be. That's my take. Let me know what you think. Send me an e-mail at [email protected]. Or go to thelifescienceeffect.com. Thank you to our presenting sponsor BPM Associates. Without them this wouldn't be possible. You can check them out at bpm-associates.com. As always, thanks for listening. Stay strong out there.