Novel Approaches to the Treatment of Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease afflicts up to 1 in 5 people over the age of 65 years and causes untold suffering of the patient and their family. The cause of this disease is unknown; indeed, evidence increasingly suggests that there may be multiple Alzheimer-type syndromes with different etiologies, analogous to different types of psychosis. Currently there are no means to prevent the disease, slow its progress or reverse its neurodegenerative consequences. With few exceptions, clinical trials of a variety of compounds have resulted in patient responses that are disappointing with respect to both the proportion of responders and the magnitude of the responses. Novel approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease are clearly warranted. For this reason, we organized the First Suncoast Workshop on the Neurobiology of Aging in St. Petersburg, Florida, which took place from February 26-March 1, 1989. This workshop focused on novel treatments and models for Alzheimer's disease and represented a cooperative venture among academia, government and industry, both in its participants and sponsorship. The Center for the Neurobiology of Aging at the University of Florida, the National Institute on Aging and Taiho Pharmaceutical Corporation in Japan sponsored the workshop in which scientists from the North America, Europe, Japan and other parts of Asia participated.