Alzheimer’s Disease — How Long Before We Find a Cure?

Today more than 5.5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s, and 10 million caregivers will attend to them during the coming year. If we do not find a way of preventing this disease, there will be about 8 million cases by 2030 and as many as 16 million in 2050. Alzheimer’s is economically as well as emotionally burdensome: direct and indirect costs of the disease amount to over $100 billion annually, according to the National Institute on Aging. Now, as a new decade gets under way, the story appears to be more complicated than many anticipated. Alzheimer’s may turn out to be an illness that has multiple, interrelated molecular causes. Still, it’s likely that the amyloid cascade plays an important role in the disease, and many scientists are trying to understand it. Up on the hill, at the Lawrence-Berkeley National Laboratory, Dr. Bing Jap and his colleagues have been studying proteins that are active within cell membranes, including the gamma secretase enzyme mentioned above. More>