Alzheimer's has been worked on for longer, but HIV got a lot of money thrown at it back in the 1990s. HIV, like any other virus, can remain dormant for years; what researchers have been successful at doing is delaying the inevitable long enough such that perhaps some other problem is the cause of death.

I hope that new therapies come in time to help him. But going beyond stopping symptoms to reversing them is another big step.

If Alzheimer's is easier than HIV, why are there already good treatments for HIV? Hasn't Alzheimer's been worked on for even longer?

It's good that you are able to work on a problem that is theoretical and yet still has such momentous practical implications right now, including for your own family.

Alzheimer's is an easy problem than HIV. The mutations for HIV make it a constantly moving target. Shaohua Xu, one of my collaborators at Florida Tech, has done the best work on understanding the protein aggregation, despite the fact that one of his competitors' models won the Nobel Prize. Dr. Xu's work has elucidated a critical step that the Nobel Prize winner thought was unimportant.

As for minimization of practical effects, not much progress has been made. However, I think that we now understand how it happens on a fundamental enough level that I expect therapies to be coming out pretty soon. There has been work that delays the worsening of the effects, and my father is living proof of it. He struggles, but he has lasted a lot longer than anyone expected.

Is Alzheimer's a harder problem than HIV? Has there been any progress with practical effects yet?

"The first scientists working on a disease entity, and publishing peer-reviewed results, were chosen, of course, to sit on the NIH and other government panels (“study sections”) to recommend grant funding. They tended to recommend proposals pursuing the line of research that had made their reputation, not lines of research that might challenge or overturn their work."

Guess who funds the NIH.....big pharma.

Mull that over...

Correct. It is difficult to turn big bucks away, so if a cure is found or a methodology which leads to a cure it may be held aside until the scientist(s) involved find it convenient to release it.

Different area of research. Maybe after you conquer Alzheimer's you can apply research to cloning.;^)

I have some very nice software for managing my research database. What I need is a cloning device. There isn't enough of me to go around.

If you need any help creating and managing your research database let me know, JB ;^)

Although I am funding my own biomedical research as a very wealthy man, there is no way in hell I would ever be able to afford to go through all the steps to get clinical trial approval from FDA. This is true even though my work should cut down dramatically on the number of animal and human subjects that would need to be tested.

Money flows to politically and economically correct research. A cure is not economically correct unless one considers a bigger picture.

Adding to my janitor analogy, if there is no janitor anymore, then the extra amino acids accumulate, and ultimately aggregate into insoluble proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...

"UBE2A, which normally serves as a central effector in the ubiquitin-26S proteasome system, coordinates the clearance of amyloid peptides via proteolysis, is known to be depleted in sporadic AD brain and, hence, contributes to amyloid accumulation and the formation of senile plaque deposits." That quoted sentence pretty much summarizes the research and development path for Alzheimer's disease. We need to provide a supplement to make sure that UBE2A doesn't shut down completely.

Think of UBE2A as the janitor that cleans up all of the extra amino acids after protein synthesis is complete. If that provided sufficient value to you, then consider financially supporting the Florida Tech Nanotechnology Minor Program as part of a value-for-value exchange.

Makes sense. We (hubby and I) hear about these things because we aren't medical professionals, and so we have to get our info as hearsay. All I can say is, carry on! Learn lots!

You need to learn about ubiquitin and its relationship to Alzheimer's disease:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1...
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2...

No, I'm not, but the Type 3 diabetes comments come up pretty routinely at national conferences that I occasionally attend.

Can you really? I have had some slight problems with memory lately. I mentioned it to my neurologist
(he should rest in peace) and he told me that every-
body got like that after 40.--But who knows? (My father had Alzheimer's. He died about 10 years ago. I went to see him, but didn't make it in time. I was told he had been refusing food and drink. (I believe he also had back pain from a fall from his bed. Maybe it was a sort of suicide. I also had the impression he had been depressed awhile).
(I did attempt CPR on the corpse, but you can't expect much success 7 hours after the fact).

Well said. But how to implement these ideas? To get rid of the FDA? To get the government out of people's lives?--I guess we must just slog ahead trying to convert people to Objectivism and free enterpise. And who knows how long that will take?---But I didn't know that the Soviet Union would collapse when it did. So maybe there is good hope.

Thank you for confirming that. I didn't want to come off as a rabid anti-carb person, but in fact, that is kind of what I am. At least anti-bad carbs. I suppose then you are aware of the personal research conducted by Dr. Mary Newport on her Alzheimer's-suffering husband.

I am funding my own biomedical research, as expensive as that is, in tissue engineering, precisely because I am not going to be Robert Stadler. If you want to fund entrepreneurial biomedical engineering education, I promise to provide value for value, and will explain more if you ask.

I can talk to you about Alzheimer's disease research. I have done some. My family has a strong history of Alzheimer's, so I am well motivated.

Very correct in the Type 3 Diabetes assessment. That was something I was going to add, as an Alzheimer's researcher.

I won't comment on the specific issue of your post because I don't have the facts, and don't have the time to look into it right now. However, why does the government get into funding these things anyway? My guess is because they have this excess money that they get from us and have a need to spend it so they can get some more.

Government screws up funding for research, just like it screws everything else up.Unless there is no cure for it, cancer should have been conquered last century. I suspect too much money is involved. When vast amounts of money flow toward a certain research it is hard to turn off the flow of dollars with a cure. Ask any Polio researcher.

Ayn covered this nicely in Atlas....

Alzheimer's is more and more increasingly becoming identified as "Type 3 Diabetes," so take that into consideration. Activities that would tend to help avoid or ameliorate T2 Diabetes (reasonable restriction of carbohydrates, especially concentrated carbohydrates) are likely to assist with T3 as well.

There is also some interesting research with administration of coconut oil in dementia. I am not saying there are any conclusions yet, but it appears that the research is looking good.

Apologies for not addressing the original question but the Alzheimer's topic is actually of more interest to me. My bad :-)