Our newest research-advisor Prof. Randall J. Bateman, MD.
The Unicorn
Pat & Dennis Bender Early Dementia Diagnosis & Prognosis Fund
J. Dennis Bender
Office, Home & Cell Phone: 859-391-5226
5726 La Jolla Blvd. – Suite 311
La Jolla, CA 92037-7345
&
Office - 100 Riverside Pl. - Suite 303
Covington, KY 41011-5711
We support the development of improved diagnostic methods for the early detection and diagnosis of MCI, Alzheimer’s, vascular and other dementias, their likely prognosis, and best treatment options. We focus on the development of Bayesian-based, medical-decision-support systems, comparative-effectiveness research, and the better utilization of these for the above. (After incorporating in KY as a 501(c)3 in 2002, we dissolved that entity in favor of a simplified form of two entirely self-financed, private philanthropies utilizing a Vanguard Charitable Trust for making annual-research-grants for early-dementia-detection and its correct differential-diagnosis and likely-prognosis. They will continue on, after I am long gone, either mentally or physically, with annual grants. Scripps Foundation, Profs. Randall Bateman, James Brewer and others will be our fund’s future research grant advisors. KMK Law is our legal advisor and my estate executor is Elizabeth Dunn.
(See: https://www.alz.org/alzheimers-dementia/research_progress/earlier-diagnosis)
www.JDBender.com – EMS/eVTOL & Educational Experimental Aviation Fund (Vanguard Charitable Trust)
www.JDBender.org – Dementia Diagnosis Fund (Vanguard Charitable Trust)
November 17, 2024
“It’s mythical. It doesn’t exist elsewhere. . . With those biomarkers, we can identify people who do not have Alzheimer's-Disease, and then others can be identified as high-risk, and they can get information very-quickly about their neurological-health. . . I would say that what we used to do in a week, we can now do in a day. . . It’s a gamechanger for Alzheimer’s-research.”
With all the new dementia-blood-tests being developed, this type of new analytical facility should be of great help in sorting through all the analytes and not requiring the usual expensive mass-spec only available in research centers, such as S.D. and St. Louis. It takes hundreds of patients' blood-samples and screens them quickly and relatively-inexpensively for dementia-blood-biomarkers, spinal-taps, and PET-scans; exactly what I have been looking for to replace today’s need for expensive mass-specs. Prof. Sid O'Bryant said he's already working on building another such machine to help hospitals and clinics process more of their patients' tests, faster and less-expensively. This machine processes these tests much faster than a typical lab, where today they're done manually. [I plan to stop by there to visit them for a few days on my way back to La Jolla in January or when I finally finish cleaning-out my condo here in CVG. At least my 10’X30’ storage-locker is now finally nearly cleaned-out. Spent another couple of hours on it today.]
Prof. Sid O'Bryant said he recommends 5 things for folks to reduce their risk-of-Alzheimer's and other brain-diseases [or at least slow-down amnestic-MCI-of-mixed-etiology, such as I have] and I try to do all of them:
- Diet: "A heart-healthy diet is a brain-healthy diet," he said.
- Medical-conditions: Get things like diabetes and hypertension under control. "All of these things increase risk later on for poor brain aging," O'Bryant said.
- Mentally-active: O'Bryant recommends doing things like crossword-puzzles or even reading.
- Socially-active: O'Bryant said humans are not supposed to be alone, and he encourages folks to engage with family and friends.
- Physical-activity: O'Bryant said not only does exercising reduce the risk of other diseases that are risk factors for brain diseases but "exercise is good for your brain at a basic molecular level."
‘The Unicorn' at UNTHSC is a Gamechanger, say Alzheimer's researchers
Machine Invented on Campus Exponentially Increases Blood Testing, Accuracy, & Speed
By Tahera Rahman • November 14, 2024
There is nothing like it in the world. That’s what researchers say about their invention, “The Unicorn,” at the UNT Health Science Center. NBC 5’s Tahera Rahman reports they say it’s a gamechanger for Alzheimer’s-research.
Researchers say 'The Unicorn,' their invention at the University of Texas Health Science Center, is a game-changer in the realm of Alzheimer's-Disease research, and the only one of its kind in the entire world.
The machine speeds-up blood-testing and increases capacity-- exponentially.
“It’s mythical. It doesn’t exist elsewhere," said Sid O'Bryant, a Professor at UNTHSC and Executive Director of their Institute for Translational Research.
The brainchild of O'Bryant, who's been on a mission since grad school, when he was working at a dementia clinic.
“I was seeing patients that were taking 12, 24, 36 months... even in a VA system to get to us," he recalled.
At the same time, he got a call from his father that O'Bryant's grandmother wasn't well. It would take them over a year to finally get her diagnosis of Alzheimer's-Disease.
Between those two experiences, he said, he realized the system was broken.
“I think the entire medical system failed her. I think I failed her. And I don’t think that’s OK. I think we can do better," O'Bryant said.
Over 20-years-later, he and his team launched The Unicorn, in partnership with Hamilton Robotics.
It takes hundreds of patients' blood-samples and screens them for blood-biomarkers.
“With those biomarkers, we can identify people who do not have Alzheimer's Disease, and then others can be identified as high-risk, and they can get information very-quickly about their neurological-health," explained David Julouvich, who helped program The Unicorn.
The machine processes these tests much faster than a typical lab, where they're done manually.
“I would say that what we used to do in a week, we can now do in a day," Julouvich said.
He said a typical lab can process up to 72 tests a week.
“Here, I’m going to have the results for up to a thousand people in one week," he said.
The automation also cuts down on human-error, researchers say, increasing test-accuracy.
It's all being used to further their studies on brain health, said O'Bryant, and the data will be published for the world to use.
“How does diabetes impact the blood-test for Alzheimer’s? In reality, at this point, we don’t know," said O'Bryant. “The things that we’re doing are explicitly designed to start teasing this out, so we can do that precision-medicine-based approaches, so we can treat your Alzheimer’s-Disease."
He said they are always looking for participants, especially among communities of color.
He said 90-95% of people enrolled in Alzheimer's studies have been white, wealthy, and highly-educated.
“We need to know what it looks like among all communities," he said. “We’re trying to represent the entire DFW community in hopes that we can also represent much more of the entire United States community.”
The study accepts people 30-years-old-and-up, and you can learn more here.
O'Bryant said he's already working on building another machine to help hospitals and clinics process more of their patients' tests, faster.
“I think this can help everyone’s abuelo, abuela. We can do that. And we will. Unequivocally, we will," he said.
Seeing The Unicorn whir stirs up O'Bryant's heart.
“I had someone text me yesterday and say, my grandmother would be proud," he said.
While it doesn't have glitter or wings, he hopes it can offer other families a happier ending-- even if there is no cure, yet.
"This machine and machines like this can get care to families and loved ones so much faster. We can get in the early-stages. We can get to where we don’t have to watch our loved ones suffer for so long before we know what’s going on. That's not OK," he said.
A Blood Test for Screening into Alzheimer's-Prevention-Trials
Rissman, Robert (COPI)
O'Bryant, Sid (PI)
College of Biomedical and Translational Sciences
Family Medicine and Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine
Project Details – Description - Project Summary
The Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's (A4) study ( http://a4study.org/ ) is a ground-breaking study designed to prevent-cognitive-decline among cognitively-normal-older-adults who are amyloid-positive. If successful, the A4-trial will demonstrate, for the first time, that it is possible to delay this devastating disease by initiating treatments prior to clinical manifestation. Such success would engender an effort to make treatments available globally. However, the only currently available means for screening-older-adults into potential-trials (or regularity-approved-therapy) for amyloid-removing-medications are amyloid-PET-scans [that I helped to fund the development of 20+years-ago at the U. of Pittsburgh,] or lumbar-punctures (LPs), neither of which are viable options for large-scale-screening, [or the early-detection of developing dementia of various types.]
Here we propose to meet the objectives of PAR-15-359 by leveraging existing biorepository-samples from the A4-trial. The long-term-goal of this work is the establishment of a multi-tier-neurodiagnostic approach for screening eligible older-adults into clinical-trials (and clinical-intervention) of anti-amyloid-agents to slow and/or prevent AD-progression. The PIs are global-leaders in blood-based-biomarkers-of-AD. This project will leverage a substantial existing infrastructure to address the following Specific Aims:
Aim 1: Validate our AD-blood-screen as the first-step in screening cognitively-normal-older-adults into prevention-trials using anti-amyloid-agents.
Aim 2: Determine the accuracy of neuronally-derived-exosomes (NDEs) for screening cognitively-normal-older-adults into prevention-trials using anti-amyloid-agents.
Aim 3: Demonstrate the cost-benefit of a multi-tier-screening-process for enrollment into prevention-studies of AD. The significance of the current proposal is the completion of the first-ever study of a blood-based-Alzheimer's-screening-test as the first-step in a multi-tier-screening-process for prevention trials. The availability of such a process would increase access to both clinical-trials and medications once FDA-approved and provide a previously utilized strategy for reimbursement-approval from other diseases.
As a reminder, the now famous, but disappointing, Anti-Amyloid Treatment in Asymptomatic Alzheimer's (A4) study was a landmark-clinical-trial aimed at evaluating whether the anti-amyloid-antibody solanezumab could slow-cognitive-decline in individuals with preclinical Alzheimer's-disease—those with elevated-brain-amyloid-levels but no clinical-symptoms. [This is the problem with dementia-treatment-testing, it takes 4-years to see if there is any effect! That is why we need to develop fast and inexpensive blood-analyte-testing, such as with using The Unicorn, that I am helping to fund.]
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Effective Start/End Date: |
9/15/2017→ 6/30/2022 |
Key Findings from the A4 Study:
- Primary Outcome: The study concluded that solanezumab did not significantly-slow-cognitive-decline compared to placebo over a period of approximately 4-years.
- Amyloid Reduction: Solanezumab, which targeted amyloid-beta-monomers, did not effectively reduce-amyloid-plaque-deposition in the brain.
Insights Gained Post-Study:
- Biomarker Correlations: Analyses revealed that higher-baseline-levels of amyloid and tau biomarkers were associated with an increased-risk-of-cognitive-decline. This suggests that individuals with elevated-biomarkers may require more-aggressive-amyloid-reduction-strategies.
- Data Availability: In September 2024, the National Institute on Aging announced the release of the A4 study's comprehensive dataset to researchers worldwide. This resource is expected to facilitate further research into preclinical-Alzheimer's-disease and aid in the development of preventive-treatments. [My associates are using this data in my funded dementia research project in La Jolla.]
- Impact on Future Research: The A4 study underscored the importance of early-intervention in Alzheimer's-disease and highlighted the need for therapies that more-effectively-target-amyloid-plaques. It also emphasized the value of large-scale, long-term studies in understanding disease-progression and treatment-efficacy.
In summary, while the A4 study did not demonstrate a clinical-benefit for solanezumab in slowing-cognitive-decline among asymptomatic-individuals with elevated-amyloid, it provided critical insights into Alzheimer's-disease-biomarkers and has paved the way for future research endeavors.
11/17/2024 3:53 AM
{The Unicorn}
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