“If I could only open one thing each morning it would be John Ellis’s News Items newsletter.” — Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.
1. Harvard University scientists have uncovered that lithium, a naturally occurring element in the brain, may be the missing piece in understanding Alzheimer’s. Their decade-long research shows that lithium depletion—caused by amyloid plaques binding to it—triggers early brain changes that lead to memory loss. By testing new lithium compounds that evade plaque capture, they reversed Alzheimer’s-like damage and restored memory in mice at doses far lower than those used in psychiatric treatments. Research article is here. (Sources: sciencedaily.com, hms.harvard.edu, nature.com)
2. Doctors and drug developers who first saw scans from a new targeted form of radiotherapy were amazed. For some patients in the clinical trial, Novartis’ radioligand therapy had — in just six months — completely cleared cancer that had spread around their bodies. Michael Morris, an oncologist at New York’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, said it was “incredible” and “never seen before”. In the first trial he worked on, the scans were clear of cancer for about 9 per cent of the participants. In the second trial, it was 21 per cent. “We can’t cure metastatic disease, but in most cases, treatment [also] really doesn’t impact how the disease appears on a scan,” he said. “We have something very different here.” (Source: ft.com)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to News Items to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.