Winter 2023 Newsletter

In This Issue:

• 2022 Turken Research Award and Symposium
• “Making” the Risk of Vascular Brain Injury in Dementia: The MarkVCID Consortium
• New Additions to the Easton Center
• Clinical Trials
• Upcoming Event

The Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Care at UCLA has very active teams working on basic research, drug discovery, biomarkers for early diagnosis and clinical activity including clinical trials, cognitive testing, and patient care. 

2022 Turken Research Award and Symposium

By: Keith Vossel, MD, MSc, Center Director

The Alzheimer’s landscape has changed considerably over the past year, and scientists at the Mary S. Easton Center for Alzheimer’s Research and Care have made substantial contributions to this change. The 32nd Annual Turken Research Award Event held on December 2, 2022, at the UCLA Faculty Center was a chance for our scientists and clinicians to celebrate advances that we have made in the field, as well as consider new challenges and opportunities to work together in the year ahead. This event was held in a hybrid format, and 92 faculty, staff, colleagues, and guests attended, including four featured speakers and 31 poster presenters.

Coinciding with our meeting in December 2022, investigators announced positive results from a phase 3 study of the amyloid-lowering monoclonal antibody lecanemab. The Kagan Clinical Trials Team in the UCLA Easton Center contributed to this pivotal study by enrolling and studying patients in the clinical trial called Clarity AD. We gained valuable experience in monitoring patients and tracking the drug’s safety. Our experience with this drug, and continued experience during the open-label extension study, will be important going forward. Lecanemab received accelerated approval from the FDA on January 6, 2023, and is being reviewed for full FDA approval later this year.

Amyloid-lowering therapy is just one of many approaches that will be needed to effectively treat or prevent Alzheimer’s disease. The Turken Event highlighted the many outstanding new approaches that our students and early career scientists are investigating in Alzheimer’s and related dementias. Our posters had a great mixture of basic science, drug development, and clinical studies and covered a wide variety of molecules and disease mechanisms, including tau, apolipoprotein E, immune cells called natural killer cells and astrocytes, and inhibitory neurons.

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