The most common questions asked about Alzheimer’s disease and its treatment are answered here by our Chief Scientist Dr. Wilfred Jefferies:
1. What is the current diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease based on?
2. Biomarker research in the past few years has been increasing yet there have been few new diagnostic tests reaching the marketplace. Why do you think that your diagnostic test for Alzheimer’s disease has a better chance than others?
3. For a diagnostic test to be useful, it must have a high degree of specificity for the disease being tested. What is the specificity of your test for Alzheimer’s disease?
4. Is there any biological reason why p97 should be useful as a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease?
5. Why would p97 be present in human blood plasma or serum when it is a marker for events that occur in the brain of Alzheimer’s patients?
6. What is the function of p97 that would involve it in Alzheimer’s disease?
7. Several large Pharmaceutical companies are searching for biomarkers for Alzheimer’s disease and have tremendous resources for application to the problem. How can you compete with them?
8. Have you got patent protection for use of p97 as a biomarker for Alzheimer’s disease and what do the patents cover and in what countries.
9. What approach will be used to further validate p97 and its correlation with Alzheimer’s disease?
10. What advantage of early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease have in terms of treatment or handling of patients?
11. Do you think that measurement of p97 in a patient’s plasma or serum would be useful as a companion diagnostic, for example by monitoring levels during different treatments?
12. Would measurement of p97 in a patient’s blood or plasma be useful in research on Alzheimer’s disease, for example by monitoring the changes in p97 affected by different experimental drugs?
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Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board
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Dr. Wilfred Jefferies, Chair Scientific Board
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Dr. Jefferies is a Professor and the Chairman of the SAB. He previously founded Synapse Technologies Inc., which was subsequently acquired by BioMarin Pharmaceuticals Inc. A world expert in identifying biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease and in the delivery of drugs across the blood brain barrier, he holds no less than 20 issued patents. Jefferies is internationally recognized as a scientific leader and innovator and is the lead inventor of biOasis’ scientific technologies.
Dr. Jefferies holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the University of Victoria and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology at the University of Oxford. He is a Professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories and the Biomedical Research Centre as well as in the Departments of Medical Genetics, Microbiology and Immunology and Zoology at the University of British Columbia. Early in his career, Jefferies defined the role of iron in promoting cancer cell growth and was the first to define a pathway of iron acquisition by melanomas. These discoveries lead directly to methods for removing cancer cells from autologous bone marrow, a technology that is still in use today. Furthermore, he was instrumental in defining the receptor system for the passage of iron from the blood into the brain. This seminal discovery lead to the development of new drug delivery systems for the delivery of drugs into the brain. These studies are widely cited and have had an immense impact on understanding the biology of the blood brain barrier. His continued interest in iron transport to the brain led to the discovery of the first unique marker of reactive microglia associated with the senile plaques in Alzheimer's disease brains.
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This remains the first and only marker of its kind that has been validated in double blind trials and that has been independently confirmed. His group recently demonstrated that this barrier is impaired in Alzheimer’s disease prior to disease onset and preceeds the appearance of plaques in the brain. These pioneering studies have again created the seed for another new area of scientific investigation that is being actively followed by the research community. This finding links Alzheimer's disease and stroke in a unique way and may form the basis for understanding at the cell and molecular level the modality of Alzheimer’s disease vaccines and methods to treat the disease.
His scientific studies have been published in the world’s most prestigious scientific journals including Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA), Nature Immunology, Journal of Experimental Medicine, EMBO Journal, Nature Biotechnology, FASEB Journal, Journal of Biological Chemistry, Nature Biotechnology, PLoS Pathogens and in many cancer related journals,including Cancer Research and the International Journal of Cancer Research. His discoveries have been described in the popular press in such publications as the Readers Digest, Popular Mechanics and newspapers such as the New York Times, the London Telegraph, the Washington Post and the Globe and Mail. Jefferies is a recipient of a University Killam Faculty Research Fellowship and has received numerous other fellowships and scholarships throughout his career. Jefferies was awarded the Microcirculatory Society's Wiederhelm Award in 2008 for his pioneering studies on the deterioration of the Blood Brain Barrier in Alzheimer’s disease.
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| Dr. Terry Pearson, Board Member and Member Scientific Advisory Board
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Dr. Pearson, Ph.D. is Senior Scientific Advisor to the Plasma Proteome Institute, Washington, DC . The Institute aims to foster a comprehensive exploration of the proteins of human blood plasma (the plasma proteome) and the rapid application of novel protein measurements in clinical diagnostics. Dr. Pearson is a professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology at the University of Victoria where he is involved in research on tropical diseases and the use of monoclonal antibodies and mass spectrometry for protein detection in a variety of applications.
Dr. Pearson received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in microbiology and immunology from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. After postdoctoral work in tumor immunology at the Medical Research Council Laboratory in Cambridge, England, in the laboratory of Dr. Sydney Brenner, Dr. Pearson worked as a staff scientist in its Division of Cell Biology. While in Cambridge he was involved in the early stages of the development of monoclonal antibody technology with Georges Kohler and Cesar Milstein.
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He was a staff scientist at the International Laboratory for Research on Animal Diseases in Nairobi, Kenya where he introduced monoclonal antibodies to Africa. Since then his research has focused on the biochemical and immunological analysis of tropical protozoan parasites, mainly trypanosomes, the causative agents of African sleeping sickness. Currently his research team uses protein micro chemical techniques and mass spectrometry as tools for identification of molecular interactions between infectious agents and insect vectors. His research also focuses on development of quantitative mass spectrometric methods for application to clinical diagnostics, an approach that involves development of antibody probes for proteins in deep proteomes such as human plasma. He served as a Trustee of the Terry Fox Medical Research Foundation and as a Director of the Science Council of British Columbia.
Dr. Pearson has published more than 150 scientific articles, many involving monoclonal antibodies and their use in protein identification and characterization. |
| Dr. (“Mike”) E. Shannon, M.A., M.Sc., M.D, Member Scientific Advisory Board |
Mike along with his Medical Degree, holds Masters degrees in both neurophysiology and physiological psychology. Mike served in the Canadian Forces for 31 years retiring at the rank of Commodore (Brigadier General equivalent) as Deputy Surgeon General for The Canadian Forces.
Mike in 1996 assumed responsibilities within Health Canada for re-organizing the Canadian blood system.
Mike has extensive research experience, which includes the directing of a phase III clinical trial in Canada, the United States and Great Britain for an artificial blood substitute product.
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In 2007-08, Mike served on a special assignment to the Canadian Public Health Agency (Center for Disease Control equivalent in the United States) as Senior Medical Advisor. His responsibility was to direct the rebuilding of the Emergency Medical Response Capacity for Canada.
Mike has just succeeded in establishing The Canadian Foundation for Global Health, which in collaboration with the WHO, PAHO and other institutions/ foundations, will be used to advocate for, fund, coordinate and conduct research intended to promote and/or enhance global health.
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Dr. (“Avi”) Livnat, Member Scientific Advisory Board
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Avi is the Founder and past General Manager of Quintiles Israel Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Quintiles Transnational Inc., the world largest Contract Research Organization. Under his management and during his three years, Quintiles Israel grew to 60 employees, to become the largest company of its kind in Israel. It currently offers a variety of services to the biomedical industry: strategic and regulatory consulting, pre-clinical testing, clinical trials design, management and pharmaco-economics evaluations.
Avi founded the Medical Device Department at the Ministry of Health of the State of Israel and was its head for four years. His department performs a similar role to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration. It practices as the safeguard of Safety and Efficacy of Medical Device (FDA-CDRH);
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Modernizing the Pharmaceutical Administration; Establishing international connections and cooperative working relationship with the FDA, Canadian and European authorities. Modernizing the Clinical Trials regulatory system in Israel.
Avi also served as a Professor of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds a B.Sc. from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Physics and Mathematics, a Ph.D. from the University of Southern California in Cardiovascular Physiology and Biomedical Engineering and a M.Sc. from the University of Illinois in Economics.
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Dr. Leigh Anderson, Member Scientific Advisory Board
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Leigh Anderson, Ph.D. is Founder and CEO of the Plasma Proteome Institute, Washington DC . The Institute aims to foster a comprehensive exploration of the proteins of human blood plasma (the plasma proteome) and the rapid application of novel protein measurements in clinical diagnostics. Prior to founding PPI, Dr. Anderson was Chief Scientific Officer at Large Scale Biology Corporation (Nasdaq: LSBC), whose proteomics division he founded in 1985 (as Large Scale Biology) prior to its merger in 1999 with Biosource Technologies. At LSBC, he developed the first automated two-dimensional electrophoresis technology platform for proteomics research, and pioneered a range of applications in drug discovery, toxicology and surrogate markers.
Dr. Anderson obtained his B.A. in Physics with honors from Yale and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Cambridge University (England) where he worked with M. F. Perutz as a Churchill Fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Subsequently he co-founded (with Dr. Norman Anderson) the Molecular Anatomy Program at the Argonne National Laboratory (Chicago) where his work in the development of 2-D electrophoresis and molecular database technology earned him, among other distinctions, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry's Young Investigator Award for 1982 and the 1983 Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award.
The Andersons together undertook the first systematic "proteomics" investigations of human plasma by 2-D electrophoresis, published in PNAS in 1977 (1), and further analyzed plasma protein microheterogeneity (2),
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and the properties of plasma antibodies (3). At LSBC, Leigh Anderson initiated a database of plasma proteins observed by 2-D electrophoresis (4), a collaboration with Pfizer that provided early direct evidence of the utility of multiple plasma protein marker panels in the study of inflammation and anti-inflammatory drug effects (5), a program to develop immunosubtraction processes for removal of the 10+ most abundant plasma proteins (6; subsequently licensed to Agilent) and the use of additional chromatographic fractionation processes for uncovering minor protein constituents (7).
Most recently, Dr. Anderson has reviewed the status of the plasma proteome (8), and initiated programs at PPI to develop a database of proteins in plasma (9) and a new method for measuring candidate protein markers in plasma (SISCAPA: 10,11).
Dr. Anderson is a former member of the Board of Directors of Dade Behring Holdings, a global diagnostics company recently acquired by Seiman Diagnostics. Dr Anderson also served on the National Academy of Science’s standing Committee on Emerging Issues and Data on Environmental Contaminants, as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre for Human Proteomics at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and the editorial boards of four proteomics journals (Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, Proteomics, the Journal of Proteome Research and Clinical Proteomics).
Dr. Anderson holds more than 30 patents and has written one book and over 130 scientific publications, mainly in the areas of proteomics and its applications.
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