No. Then why do I even bring this up? Yesterday, a patient asked me if Alzheimer’s disease could be prevented (or made less likely) if you ate the “right” diet. It’s a question that strikes not to the core of the pathology, but to the depth of our fears. Historical precedents offer useful parallels and […]

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. – Variously Attributed [This blog was written and published on Monday July 20th, two days prior to the announcement of the results of Eli Lilly’s clinical trials of solanezumab for Alzheimer’s.] Until now, there have been only two globally-approved drugs for […]

Alzheimer’s disease steals our souls. We lose our humanity when it destroys the neurons that make up a critical part of our brains, but why those neurons die has always remained a mystery since “senility” was first noted, thousands of years ago. Even in the past century, since it was first described clinically by Dr. […]

Last weekend, a global entrepreneur asked me about the difference between much of the current research and what we’re doing. He cited the example of a particular compound (NAD+), but any number of other compounds could be given as examples. My answer was that most researchers are focused on their one particular tree and can’t […]

Last week I attended a global conference on aging research. The presentations were professional and thoughtful, as befits an organization of researchers with impeccable academic and clinical credentials. These are bright, well-educated people who work hard to understand not only the basic science that underlies aging, but the possible interventions that might cure age-related diseases. […]

Many of you have asked about Helen Blau’s work at Stanford, using telomerase mRNA [FASEB Journal]. Helen sent me a copy of her article when it came out and I’m a serious fan of her work. As some of you know from my upcoming book, The Telomerase Revolution, there are four approaches to resetting telomeres: […]

My new book, The Telomerase Revolution, is now finished and is being copy edited by the publisher. Oddly enough, it’s already selling well in preorders. Amazon.com says that it is now the “#1 release in medical research”, which is a delightful surprise, since it won’t actually be published and available to the public until October. […]

A friend pointed out that a recent Danish study suggested that short telomere lengths in circulating peripheral lymphocytes account for about a quarter of the variance in mortality. Does this mean that lymphocyte telomere lengths (LTL’s) are really only a minor factor in age-related disease and mortality? Probably, but it’s not the important question. A […]

Things are slowly beginning to move ahead on our project to cure Alzheimer’s disease. It’s clear that not only is the role of microglia slowly becoming accepted, but there are more and more investors who see an opportunity to help move biotech and medicine from the old paradigm (BAPP and Tau cause disease) to the […]

An odd thing is happening in the world of biotechnology: an avalanche is starting. The context is also interesting, for over the past twenty five years, a profound revolution has occurred in our understanding of aging. Where once we took aging for granted, we now reexamine the process, looking for a way to reverse it. […]

Every several weeks, I notice publication of yet another article trumpeting another aspect of Alzheimer’s. Where once it was APOE-4, AB42, or SS31 (an antioxidant peptide), more recent work emphasizes arginine metabolism in the microglia. The good news is that research community has — ponderously and hesitantly — finally begun to shift the clinical focus […]

At the moment, there are four companies planning human trials to reset telomeres using telomerase genes. In every case, the intent is to put the telomerase genes (hTERT and hTERC) into human patients in an effort to cure age-related diseases. Let’s look at the diseases and then the companies involved. Essentially, all age-related diseases occur […]

As I write this in March of 2015, there are 1,315 registered clinical studies of potential interventions for Alzheimer’s disease (see ClinicalTrials.gov). While it is hard to define clearly, many of these studies deal with nursing issues, rather than medical interventions aimed at preventing or curing the pathology itself. Of those that are testing potential […]

The notion that all aging is ultimately cell aging is a novel hypothesis and one with growing support. Recent studies in genetics and cell biology are consistent with this view. Criticism of the model is largely reflective of inadequate understanding of both the model itself and human pathology. Hutchinson-Gilford progeria is a segmental progeria that […]

What is aging? There are literally dozens of answers to that question, even if we restrict ourselves to purely academic views. In the days when I was the executive director of the American Aging Association, there were – or so it seemed – as many aging hypotheses as we had members of the association. Almost […]