Seminar on Alzheimer’s disease including innovative microscopy and immunotherapy

Today I attended a seminar at Harvard Medical School by Dr. Hyman ( http://adams.mgh.harvard.edu/cagn/Faculty/hyman.html ) on developments in the understanding of Alzheimers. Two aspects of this presentation were most interesting.
First, Elan pharmaceuticals is in trials of Beta amyloid immunotherapy ( http://www.elan.com/research_development/Alzheimers/ ) as a way to remove the Alzheimrs related beta amylod from the brain and second, the use of a technique called multiphoton confocal microscopy that allows high magnification viewing of live brain tissue.
From Elan’s web site: Beta amyloid immunotherapy is the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease by inducing or enhancing the body’s own immune response in order to clear beta amyloid from the brain. Active immunization stimulates the body’s own immune system to manufacture anti beta amyloid antibodies that may attach to amyloid and clear it from the brain. This, in turn, appears to reduce the build up of beta amyloid in the brain tissue of patients. Through a monoclonal antibody approach (passive immunization), synthetically engineered antibodies directed at beta amyloid are injected into the bloodstream and are thought to help reverse beta amyloid accumulation.
multiphoton confocal microscopy ( http://www.loci.wisc.edu/multiphoton/mp.html ) can look a light only coming from a slice of tissue. Fluorescent tags are used to make specific tissue glow specific colors. The pictures are similar to those form tissue sections but of living tissue. By placing a window in the head of mice the same cells in the same mouse can be observed from day to day. Thus, changes can be monitored in a single animal providing information that is almost impossible to obtain if the animal has to be sacrificed in order to observe the brain tissue microscopically. This is great stuff.

Multiphoton Studies in Alzheimers disease models
Speaker's Name: Bradley Hyman, M.D., Ph.D.
Speaker's Affiliation: Massachusetts General Hospital
Location_Line 1: Room 122, Goldenson Building
Location_Line 2: CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, Inc.
Location_Line 3: 220 Longwood Ave, Boston
Contact Name/Phone#: Kyle Shovlin, 617-278-3226
Details:
Dr. Brad Hyman,John B Penney Professor,Massachusetts General Hospital,
Harvard Medical School will be delivering a CBRI Seminar on June 15,
2006 at 220 Longwood Ave. -Goldenson Rm 122