The fight against Alzheimer's disease is a numbers game: while no cure is on the immediate horizon, experts say, drugs now being developed could delay the disease's onset for five years or more, thus dramatically reducing the number of cases.

	School of Medicine Professor Robert Green speaks with study participant Barbara Loatman and Mayuri Thakuria (SPH'03), a research assistant. Photo by Vernon Doucette

"By slowing the biological progression of the disease, we can essentially stop Alzheimer's in its tracks for many elderly people," says Robert Green, a School of Medicine professor of neurology and the clinical director of BU's Alzheimer's Disease Center (ADC).

For years, BU researchers have been developing tools that help clinicians identify people most at risk for Alzheimer's, diagnose it early, and administer treatments that diminish its symptoms, or delay or prevent their appearance altogether. Those efforts recently received a boost from the Fidelity Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Boston's Fidelity Investments, and the eight members of the Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Advisory Board: Norman J. Arnold, Paul C. Barsam (STH'52), Harold N. Chefitz (CGS'53, COM'55), Joan E. Cohen (parent of Heidi P. Cohen, GSM'01), board chairman Michael J. Critelli, Beth C. Fentin, Deborah Lawrence-Swallow, and N. Stephen Ober (CAS'82, MED'86). Established last October, the board has already given $55,000 to support the center. The Fidelity Foundation gave the University $150,000 to apply toward the salary and research expenses of Robert Stern, a former Brown University neurology and psychiatry professor recently recruited to BU.

Stern, who begins his position as MED associate professor of neurology and associate director of ADC's clinical core in April, studies the relationship between thyroid function and the development of Alzheimer's, an ultimately fatal neurodegenerative disease that affects about five million Americans. His work could lead to treatments for the disease, such as one involving the use of thyroid hormones.

Stern's expertise, says Green, will be a "tremendous addition" to the ADC, where ongoing projects include a $25 million National Institutes of Health-funded prevention trial to test the potential protection that anti-inflammatory drugs provide against Alzheimer's, and one of the world's largest epidemiological studies on genetic and nongenetic risk factors for the disease. BU Alzheimer's researchers-in fields including neurobiology, neuroanatomy, biochemistry, and pharmacology-also work closely with Boston Medical Center's New England Centenarian Study, exploring why some people escape the disease, and the NIH-funded and BU-administered Framingham Heart Study, which contains detailed medical records of 10,000 Framingham residents over the past five and a half decades, examining potential connections between vascular risk factors and Alzheimer's.

Stern was attracted to BU in part because of its reputation for supporting interdisciplinary research. "It's going to be a real joy to work in an environment that fosters collaborative research-within disciplines, across disciplines, and across schools and colleges," he says. "I know that happens in a wonderfully collegial fashion at BU, and that is truly rare."

"Our Alzheimer's Disease Center has significant funding from the National Institutes of Health, and we're one of twenty-nine federally designated Centers of Excellence in Alzheimer's disease research, which is very prestigious," says Green, who came to BU four years ago. "Yet until now this area of research at BU has attracted relatively little philanthropic support. Changing that has been among my top priorities, and the results so far have been very gratifying."

As well as a research facility, the ADC is a leading treatment center, and the only such center with NIH funding to study the effectiveness of disclosing to patients their genetic predisposition for the disease. It has special expertise in how Alzheimer's affects African-Americans.

"There's been a tremendous amount of progress in understanding and treating Alzheimer's disease in the past few years," Green says. "Today, a clinical care center like ours is able to diagnoses Alzheimer's disease with greater than 90 percent accuracy, which is much more reliable than in the recent past. Another area where there's been a lot of progress is in the development of drugs that can slow progression of the disease and help people cope with symptoms. Also, there is hope that a vaccine against the amyloid protein that accumulates in the brain of Alzheimer's patients will be developed, and BU has a world-renowned Amyloidosis Research Center.

"So there is every reason to believe that there is going to be much more progress made against Alzheimer's in the next few years," he continues, "and Boston University is definitely going to be a part of it."

— David J. Craig

More information about the BU Alzheimer's Disease Center is available by calling 1-888-458-BUAD (2823) or visiting www.bu.edu/alzresearch