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Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

monash.edu

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Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#31

Post by contingencies »

musiciangames wrote: post #20
TaupeRanger wrote: post #13

Flagged. Nonsense puff piece by the university. The headline itself is beyond terrible - this is a mouse model and would need years of further successful research to be able to say that it "restores memory" in any meaningful way, let alone in actual humans.

Yes, it’s really disappointing to see Monash doing that - not a mention of mouse or mice.

AFAIK the background is the 'big 5' universities in Australia have a fat loan due which they took out 10 years ago and can't pay. Their primary income source was foreign exchange students and that demand has fallen off a cliff. So they're shedding academics and puffing like crazy right now. It seems in the near future Australian tertiary education will be highly corporatized and move to a more American model than our European-style history.

Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#32

Post by dgoldstein0 »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #10
bluGill wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care what works, not about debate. This seems to work and that trumps any debate about what the real means are. Don't get me wrong, if you are in this area of research this debate is important. There may be other types of Alzheimer's that have a different means. This drug may actually target something else. There might be some other truth I haven't thought it - but to me as an outsider the important part is a treat…

You are wrong. This paper very clearly does not show that it "works". The debate exists for a good reason - the very thing this paper claims to show is the exact thing the person you replied to was questioning. And that is a central question in all of Alzheimer's research. There are dozens of studies that show mice improving their memory/spatial reasoning as Alzheimer's models. None of them have led to a proven impro…

> Over 56 days, the treatment reduced toxic amyloid-beta by 42 per cent and improved spatial learning by nearly 44 per cent

So there's some benefit. Sounds like their next step is a much larger trial to answer the question you are posing.

Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#33

Post by a_conservative »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #25
cassepipe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just one person's (informed I assume) opinion tough. It does sound like common sense but alas common sense is rarely a good guide when it comes down to how the body works. I don't have a dog in this fight and I don't remember that much but I read someone's "in defense of the amyloid hypothesis" with interest. So if you want an counterpoint, you can go read https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-am…

No actually there’s a large body of quashed research over these decades that went against the prevailing hypothesis. It’s one of the key examples of how peer review fails to consider novel approaches in the face of consensus even if consensus is shown to likely be wrong. The fact the original research driving the consensus was fraudulent at worst made it that much more sad. To be clear this isn’t about whether it’s r…

An example of fraud in research that contributed to the consensus.

> The 2006 paper suggested an amyloid beta (Aβ) protein called Aβ*56 could cause Alzheimer’s.

https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-plan-ret...

Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#34

Post by dekhn »

cassepipe wrote: post #23
quadhome wrote: post #5

Alzheimer’s is driven by the buildup of toxic proteins called amyloid-beta. In the words of Derek Lowe: Amyloid-directed therapies truly, truly do not appear to be the answer for Alzheimer’s treatment. When I started work in the field back in the early 1990s, I was convinced of the opposite - the evidence looked very strong that defects in amyloid processing were indeed the cause of the disease. But that was thirty-f…

This is just one person's (informed I assume) opinion tough. It does sound like common sense but alas common sense is rarely a good guide when it comes down to how the body works. I don't have a dog in this fight and I don't remember that much but I read someone's "in defense of the amyloid hypothesis" with interest. So if you want an counterpoint, you can go read https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-am…

If I had to choose between Derek Lowe (author of the anti-amyloid-research article who is also highly experienced and skilled in pharma) and Scott Alexander/David Schneider-Joseph (psychiatrist and AI engineer, respectively), all my priors suggest Lowe gives better advice.

"I am David Schneider-Joseph, an engineer formerly with SpaceX and Google, now working in AI safety. Alzheimer’s isn’t my field, but I got very interested in it, spent six months studying the literature, and came away believing the amyloid hypothesis was basically completely solid. I thought I’d share that understanding with current skeptics."

6 months of reading literature when you don't know how to read biomedical literature isn't very confidence inducing. I know this site really likes it when smart outsiders come in and disrupt the status quo, but... probably not in this case.

Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#35

Post by mimicmagnet »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #32
TaupeRanger wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are wrong. This paper very clearly does not show that it "works". The debate exists for a good reason - the very thing this paper claims to show is the exact thing the person you replied to was questioning. And that is a central question in all of Alzheimer's research. There are dozens of studies that show mice improving their memory/spatial reasoning as Alzheimer's models. None of them have led to a proven impro…

> Over 56 days, the treatment reduced toxic amyloid-beta by 42 per cent and improved spatial learning by nearly 44 per cent So there's some benefit. Sounds like their next step is a much larger trial to answer the question you are posing.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acschemneuro.6c00252

In mice. This is a repeating trend in Alzheimer's research, where the amyloid-beta treatment works in the mouse model but not on humans, because the mouse model induces the amyloid-beta issue (mice don't really get Alzheimer's) and then we treat it.

Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#37

Post by selimthegrim »

dekhn wrote: post #34
cassepipe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just one person's (informed I assume) opinion tough. It does sound like common sense but alas common sense is rarely a good guide when it comes down to how the body works. I don't have a dog in this fight and I don't remember that much but I read someone's "in defense of the amyloid hypothesis" with interest. So if you want an counterpoint, you can go read https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-am…

If I had to choose between Derek Lowe (author of the anti-amyloid-research article who is also highly experienced and skilled in pharma) and Scott Alexander/David Schneider-Joseph (psychiatrist and AI engineer, respectively), all my priors suggest Lowe gives better advice. "I am David Schneider-Joseph, an engineer formerly with SpaceX and Google, now working in AI safety. Alzheimer’s isn’t my field, but I got very in…

This really has become the new physics now, right where they think they can invade any given field in six months because that’s how long it’s supposed to take physicists to learn AI

Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#38

Post by uxhacker »

fnordpiglet wrote: post #25
cassepipe wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just one person's (informed I assume) opinion tough. It does sound like common sense but alas common sense is rarely a good guide when it comes down to how the body works. I don't have a dog in this fight and I don't remember that much but I read someone's "in defense of the amyloid hypothesis" with interest. So if you want an counterpoint, you can go read https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/in-defense-of-the-am…

No actually there’s a large body of quashed research over these decades that went against the prevailing hypothesis. It’s one of the key examples of how peer review fails to consider novel approaches in the face of consensus even if consensus is shown to likely be wrong. The fact the original research driving the consensus was fraudulent at worst made it that much more sad. To be clear this isn’t about whether it’s r…

Groupthink is very much the scientific method. According to Imre Lakatos the key question is does the group expand knowledge or contract it (very rushed reply as about to catch a flight)

Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#39

Post by JackFr »

TaupeRanger wrote: post #10
bluGill wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I care what works, not about debate. This seems to work and that trumps any debate about what the real means are. Don't get me wrong, if you are in this area of research this debate is important. There may be other types of Alzheimer's that have a different means. This drug may actually target something else. There might be some other truth I haven't thought it - but to me as an outsider the important part is a treat…

You are wrong. This paper very clearly does not show that it "works". The debate exists for a good reason - the very thing this paper claims to show is the exact thing the person you replied to was questioning. And that is a central question in all of Alzheimer's research. There are dozens of studies that show mice improving their memory/spatial reasoning as Alzheimer's models. None of them have led to a proven impro…

In fairness to parent, while the article doesn't say the title claims 'restores memories'.

Re: Copper transport drug restores memory and clears toxic Alzheimer's proteins

#40

Post by PrincepsZero »

discretion22 wrote: post #2

Great news! If you are a mouse. For humans, not yet progressed to trials though safety has been evaluated for other diseases, so possible for trials to happen quickly? " the compound has strong potential to quickly transition into human clinics because it has already undergone safety evaluations for other diseases."

I mean why not allow right to try for people who are already so far gone. It can potentially help them and all of us.
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