Some years ago, a part of my research branched out from cancer to Alzheimer's disease. Last year I wrote a grant to fund the Alzheimer's disease related study. The "big" grant was not funded, but scored, which led to a small grant that allows us to "fix" the big grant and resubmit it.
So the Alzheimer's-related project continued. To familiarize myself to the broader Alzheimer's disease research field, I budgeted to attend AAIC 2022 conference in the small grant.
The AAIC is a major research conference for Alzheimer's disease research. Over years I've attended different meetings from different organizations; Cancer Research (ACS, AACR), Cell Biology, Molecular Biology, Yeast biology, Cell Cycle conference, and so on. They came with different flavors and had different cultures. I was curious about the AAIC and Alzheimer's disease research.
Due to some delays in analysis with expensive new technology (we do not get a hang of it until we actually do it, don't we), we did not get to present results in the AAIC22 conference. Well, that is okay. We will know the results in a few weeks.
Anyhow, I signed up for the AAIC 2022 meeting online/virtual. The meeting itself was hybrid, offering actual meeting in San Diego with an option to watch symposiums and posters online.
To be honest, in covid time I've come to like virtual conference. Apparently I am not very fond of business travels. I am fine with attending sessions while sipping tea in my office. Virtual meeting cost much less, too ($250 to be exact).
The sessions were quite interesting. There were a lot of talks on immunological aspects in Alzheimer's disease development. Disease disparity (e.g., racial differences in clinical trials) appeared to be a hot topic.
Yet, the conference gave me an impression that how incomplete our understanding on Alzheimer's disease still is.
I may be speaking from the standard of cancer research, where the major frames of understanding seem to have been already established, much better than those for Alzheimer's.
In other words, there is still so much work to do in Alzheimer's disease research field.
For example, for cancers, personalized medicine approach has increasingly become common. Clinician colleagues discuss treatment strategy based on test results of genomic mutations from each patient's cancer.
In AAIC22, there were talks about different types of Alzheimer's. But molecular signatures for each type are vague, and treatments for the different types are yet to be elucidated.
As our methodologies are rapidly advancing and clinical/disease data keep piling up, I'd imagine, 10-20 years from now, AAIC would look quite different. They may be talking about Alzheimer's disease subtypes and causes, and treatment or prevention options for each subtype. Current therapies of 2022 would be obsolete and things of the past.
As a "newcomer", I do not have much emotional investment in current treatment strategies. I am fine if current treatments become obsolete. They have not shown great efficacies anyway.
Clearly there are unmet needs in current medical practices in Alzheimer's disease.
How can we address them?
Bottom line. We do not have effective therapies for Alzheimer's disease as of 2022. That makes now an interesting time for scientists.
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