[ExI] Jaw-dropping CWRU Alzheimer's breakthrough?

[spike]

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On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 3:02 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:

> >...  This would be for, you know, like, washing your hands and such.

>...Ja, I have not been posting everything I have been reading, but I will condense the message...spike


Rafal might wish to comment on my encouraging observations while studying bexarotene.  This bex adventure is a really good example of model based science in medicine.  Most of my exposure to the field as a patient and as a friend of doctors convinced me their science is mostly if not almost entirely observational: take this stuff and this happens, take that and the other thing happens.  They map the symptoms with the medications and side effects and try to make their best guess at what to prescribe, not really knowing why they see what they see, or having only a sketchy idea.

The bexarotene development has demonstrated at least some of these researchers, and Rafal's comments, demonstrate they have at least some theoretical model for why this stuff appears to do what it does, and why, and how to take the next step.  For instance, we have a notion that bex somehow stimulates the mechanism which cleans up beta amyloids, but it isn't a good barrier crosser, but other similar medications are good crossers.  We have a notion for how to create lipophilic substances that may help a particular medication find its way into the brain without altering whatever it is that made it effective in stimulating beta amyloid reducing mechanisms.  

Medicine is becoming a science with models which have at least some predictive capability.  The progress seems slow, but if they demonstrate a breakthrough from predictive theoretical models, then this is a huge advance in medical science, perhaps the biggest since penicillin.  Half of us here will eventually get Alzheimer's symptoms if we live long enough.  If these researchers find the answer, they have saved untold suffering and waste of a lifetime of learning.

spike