An Interview with Doug Ethell of Leucadia Therapeutics

Leucadia Therapeutics is a startup company focused on Alzheimer's disease, noteworthy for being one of the few ventures to depart from the orthodoxy of immunotherapy to clear amyloid and tau protein aggregates. The Leucadia founder is working on the establishment of a faster and cheaper path to an effective therapy for Alzheimer's that nonetheless still addresses the deeper causes of the condition. Leaving the mainstream is perhaps more of a challenge in the Alzheimer's research community than elsewhere; the US National Institute on Aging has for years been primarily an Alzheimer's concern, and the biggest of Big Pharma entities have made equally large investments in the field over that same period of time. As a result there is a great deal of institutional inertia to continue to push forward with large and costly amyloid clearance strategies that are only incremental improvements on those that have failed by the dozen in the past. Publicly advocating any other path can have a negative impact on career prospects when embedded in such a large and structured system. However, going on for two decades in to these efforts, and with no practical therapy yet to show for the billions spent, the Alzheimer's heretics are starting to become more organized and influential. It is undeniably the case that protein aggregates of amyloid and tau are important in Alzheimer's, and if they were removed safely and efficiently, patients would benefit. But these forms of metabolic was...
Source: Fight Aging! - Category: Research Authors: Tags: Healthy Life Extension Community Source Type: blogs