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Dr. William Jagust explains how tau and beta amyloid, two proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease, develop in the aging brain. (Photo by Stephen McNally, UC Berkeley)

New research led by scientists at UC Berkeley shows for the first time that PET scans can track the progressive stages of Alzheimer’s disease in cognitively normal adults, a key advance in the early diagnosis and staging of the neurodegenerative disorder.

In the process, the scientists also obtained important clues about two Alzheimer’s-linked proteins – tau and beta-amyloid – and how they relate to each other.

The findings, published March 2 in the journal Neuron, come from positron emission tomography (PET) of 53 adults. Five were young adults aged 20-26, 33 were cognitively healthy adults aged 64-90 and 15 were patients aged 53-77 who had been diagnosed with probable Alzheimer’s dementia.

A little more than a year after the White House announced the Precision Medicine Initiative, researchers at Penn and across the nation are optimistic about the future of clinical treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.

The “all-in approach” taken by federal agencies “could not be happening at a more opportune time,” said Cynthia Bens, executive director of Accelerate Cure/Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease (ACT-AD), which hosted a panel discussion on precision medicine Monday. More than 5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease today, and that number is expected to more than triple by 2050, Bens said. Click here to listen to the complete presentation.

Steven Huege, MD, associate program director of the University of Pennsylvania’s geriatric psychiatry fellowship program, has accepted a new role at the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. Huege will leave the Penn Memory Center after eight years to become director of the UCSD geriatric psychiatry fellowship program in May. He will divide his time between the San Diego VA and the university’s Senior Behavioral Health Program and Department of Psychiatry.

“This is a new phase of my career, and I’m looking forward to the opportunity to continue working with trainees in geriatric psychiatry,” said Huege, assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Penn.

Huege began his current role with the Penn Memory Center in 2008 after completing his fellowship in geriatric psychiatry at Penn. He’s become increasingly involved in working with fellows and residents. He said working with the Penn Memory Center and its clinical trials has provided him with a “rich education in research.”

“I’m really very grateful for the opportunity to have worked with such a dynamic and supportive team. I really have learned tremendously from all of my colleagues,” he said. “This is a program that both provides excellent patient care in addition to research and outreach, and I’ve been very grateful to have been a part of that for eight years now.”

Huege received his undergraduate degree from Duke University and his MD from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. He completed a residency is psychiatry at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital before his fellowship at Penn.

NIA Director Richard Hodes (back left) speaks to clinicians and researchers from the University of Pennsylvania Feb. 1. (Photo by Nicolette Patete/Penn Institute on Aging)

In a rare visit to the University of Pennsylvania, National Institute on Aging Director Richard Hodes spoke highly of the university’s abundance of research collaborations and encouraged expansion in that format for future studies.

Dr. Hodes was on the Penn campus Feb. 1 to meet with researchers and clinicians working in the fields of aging, neuroscience, and immunology through a series of round-table discussions.

Penn clinicians stressed the importance they place on training the next generation of scientists and healthcare providers and creating pilot programs to fund the research of junior faculty members. Hodes said he applauds the abundance of collaborative research, like that conducted by the Penn Memory Center.

“I believe we presented Dr. Hodes with a close-up, in-depth look at a very broad and representative swath of all the aging and neuroscience research currently underway here at Penn that has the potential to influence our biological understanding of Alzheimer’s and related dementias now and into the future, and the clinical research and disease modifying therapies to help better treat, protect, and understand patients with AD and related dementias,” said Dr. John Trojanowski, director of the Penn Institute on Aging.

Click here to read complete coverage on the IOA website.

The Winter 2016 edition of the Penn Memory Center newsletter, InSight, has been published and sent to our mailing list.

Inside this edition:

• A New Perspective: Joseph and Dorothea Jenkins discover the value in research participation
• Features on the Memory Café and Cognitive Comedy
• Living With Dementia: Guidance in a global classroom

Click the preview below or click here to take a closer look. If you didn’t receive your copy or want to be added to the mailing list, contact Terrence Casey at 215-898-9979 or terrence.casey@uphs.upenn.edu.

Hosted by the Community Development Studies & Education Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, this meeting will explore the state of financial stability and economic security for older adults. In addition, attendees will learn about emerging research and practitioner perspectives on best practices for building financial capability for this demographic. Financial institutions and community partners will discuss efforts to provide age-friendly banking products and services that address financial abuse and fraud and provide access to banking for seniors. View a draft agenda here.

The University of California system has chosen a new director of its Alzheimer’s Disease Cooperative Study (ADCS), and he says he is already optimistic about the “new era” of research and treatment.

“I think dementia research has entered a new stage,” said University of British Columbia neurologist Howard Feldman, who will formally begin his new role with ADCS in April. “Over the past two decades, we’ve learned an enormous amount about the biology of disease, and have advanced our ability for the first time to visualize the pathology of the dementias in the living brain. This heralds a new era in being able to mark the impact of treatment as we seek the elusive goal of slowing or preventing these dementias.”