2009
Year 29
Prof. John C. Morris
Harvey A Dorismae Professor of Neurology
Pathology & Immunology, Washington University, St. Louis, USA
THEME: THE AGEING BRAIN & MIND
The important areas of development in AD research are aimed at identification of an early,
presymptomatic biomarker of the disease, and specific drug therapy for AD. One promising technique
developed by the University of Pittsburgh, USA, is PET scanning using Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) as
tracer, to identify brain areas with high levels of amyloid plaques, which precede the clinical cognitive
decline. The currently available drug therapy for AD is mainly supportive and palliative. Current
research initiatives in developing drugs are targeted at three distinctive neuropathological changes
that occur in AD, namely amyloid plaques, neurofibrillary tangles and marked cell loss. There is hope
that we will contain the dementia epidemic, with future successes in the relentless search by the
neuroscientific community for an early biomarker of AD and for well tailored drug treatment which
efficaciously arrests progression of the degenerative process, even as a global awareness of risk factors
provides the backdrop of preventive care. Treating people before they have symptoms will be more
successful than treating them after the symptoms start, a paradigm shift from cure to prevention.
