>>Then again who is Rman<<
Heard a rumor about some guy with that handle--tall, hairy and bearded, liked Mecian food and used to work for a biotech company named INCY. Then one called Norian. Used to tear up the SI biotech threads with classic posts. Had a thread and a disease named after him. Then one day he came back from a vacation... and no one's heard from him since. Hear tell his friends on the thread sure miss him, tho...
BTW, I've been getting more interested in IPIC. In addition to Redux and the rest of their pipeline, they have a drug called citicoline in P3. This drug sells about 225m/year in Europe and Asia. It is used for reducing stroke damage and the odds are very good it will be approved for such use in the US. In addition this article about citicoline, it seems to be effective vs. memory loss, also:
A Drug to Remember
By Benedict Carey
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Many years from now, when you can't recall where you left the car keys--or worse, the car--just try to remember one thing: citicoline.
Used as a stroke treatment in Europe and under study in the United States, the drug seems to limit damage to victims' brains. Now scientists have found that citicoline may also improve memory in elderly folks who are simply becoming forgetful.
Researchers at the Massa-chusetts Institute of Technology gave the drug to 95 men and women between the ages of 50 and 85 for three months. During this time each volunteer took periodic memory tests: He or she would hear a passage read aloud, and later be asked to repeat as much of it as possible. Citicoline, the researchers found, did not improve the performance of volunteers with normal recall. But the substance did raise scores among those whose memories were beginning to fail.
The team then tried a second experiment. Fourteen of the volunteers with below average recall abilities received a higher dose of citicoline. Thirteen others were given a placebo. After two months, the two groups showed dramatic differences. Volunteers taking citicoline raised their test scores by as much as 66 percent, while the others' scores, over the long run, remained stable.
"Scientists have been looking for drugs to improve memory for 30 years, and we've been disappointed for 30 years," says Neil Buckholtz, a neuroscien-tist at the National Institute of Aging who follows such research. "That's why this study is really interesting." Tacrine, developed for people with Alzheimer's, is an example of a drug that came up short. Though doctors initially had high hopes because the drug seems to improve cognitive abilities in animals, it brings only minor relief to humans. According to Paul Spiers, an mit psychologist who worked on the study, citicoline increases production of a chemical called acetylcholine, which is used by nerve cells to transmit impulses in the brain. The drug also helps provide an amino acid, cytidine, needed to preserve the membranes of these nerve cells as the body ages. "Everyone thinks it's normal to become forgetful as you age," says Spiers. "But it's becoming clear that this is not inevitable. It may be something we can help prevent." |
