As with most common diseases of the developed world, aging is the major risk factor for developing cancer. Most of the half-dozen hallmarks of precancer that were published last week by investigators from Vanderbilt University and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center are also hallmarks of aging. Unfortunately, scientists reported at the American Association for Cancer Research’s (AACR) 2024 annual meeting this week that accelerated aging is increasing, and may be driving an increase in early-onset cancers.

At a recent meeting on “Research priorities for preventing and treating Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias” (ADRD), convened by the National Academies, one consensus priority on ADRD research was that there needs to be more of it at every stage. Several speakers presented stark numbers on the relative volume of research in cancer and neurodegeneration. Research output, measured in peer-reviewed papers, for dementia is estimated to be around 10,000 papers annually, compared to 150,000 for cancer, while AD clinical trials are also few and far between compared to cancer trials. This final installment of BioWorld’s series on Alzheimer’s explores some of the reasons for this discrepancy along with the latest advances and ongoing efforts to accelerate research and drug development in the field.

After decades of trying and dozens of failed trials, amyloid targeting has paid off with the first disease-modifying agents reaching the market. But success does not mean slam dunk. Aduhelm (aducanumab, Biogen Inc.) was dogged by controversy throughout its brief tenure, and Biogen pulled the plug on it in early 2024. Leqembi (lecanemab, Biogen Inc.) has received full approval. In this second installment of a three-part series on Alzheimer’s, BioWorld looks at the nuanced view of amyloid’s role in the disease.

Ironically, the first person to be diagnosed with what is now Alzheimer’s disease was missing its major risk factor. When she first began showing symptoms of dementia in 1901, Auguste Deter was not particularly old. Despite Deter’s case, aging is the largest risk factor for developing Alzheimer’s, by a large margin. But “geroscience has not been translated into drugs for Alzheimer’s disease,” Howard Fillit, Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation co-founder and chief scientific officer, told BioWorld. “We’re just starting to see that cross-fertilization now.” This first article of a three-part BioWorld series on Alzheimer’s disease looks at how a group of researchers, as well as some startups, are trying to approach Alzheimer’s via an aging lens.

Scientists from the Australian National University have discovered the gene mutation responsible for causing psoriasis, and the findings could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment for patients with psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis, a chronic inflammatory skin disease. “We were able to identify the gene that could be important in enabling this progression from a skin-only condition to a skin-and-joint condition,” lead study author Chelisa Cardinez told BioWorld.

Deep learning algorithms have enabled the discovery of molecular structures of interest in biomedicine to design treatments against aggressive diseases such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Scientists at Insilico Medicine Inc. selected a target for IPF using artificial intelligence (AI), then designed an inhibitor to block it, and tested it in vitro, in vivo, and in clinical trials.

Eledon Pharmaceuticals Inc.’s tegoprubart, an investigational anti-CD40 ligand antibody, was used as part of the immunosuppressive regimen after the first-ever transplant of a kidney from a genetically modified pig to a human. The tegoprubart procedure was done March 16 at Massachusetts General Hospital on a 62-year-old man with end-stage renal disease.

After many years of testing different monoclonal antibodies against amyloid-β protein, the results obtained are far from being outstanding, and the control of the progression and symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) remains elusive. At the recent AD/PD 2024 conference held in Lisbon, new non-anti-amyloidogenic strategies in the starting line against AD were discussed. Professor Einar Sigurdsson from New York University gave a presentation entitled, “Single domain antibodies for therapy and diagnosis of synucleinopathies and tauopathies.”

Precision psychiatry got some love at two quite different meetings this week, the European Congress of Neuropsychopharmacology’s New Frontiers meeting and BioEurope Spring. The New Frontiers Meeting, an annual two-day meeting dedicated to cutting-edge issues in brain disease research, focused on big-picture and scientific – at times almost philosophical – questions of how to get to a classification scheme for brain disorders that aligns with the underlying biology.

One topic at the 31st Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI 2024) held in Denver this month was that resistance to antiretroviral therapy (ART) has become a public health problem for people living with HIV. Without a vaccine or a cure, these patients depend on treatments that suppress viremia by preventing the virus from replicating. They are lifelong treatments and, until new advances succeed in eradicating the virus from reservoirs, the only option available.