Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD: Innovations in Alzheimer Disease

"We've never known as much about the disease as we do now."

At the 2018 Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Chicago, Illinois, Nir Lipsman, MD, PhD, sat down with NeurologyLive to talk about his excitement about where the medical science community is at, at this point, in the understanding of Alzheimer disease.

As the neurosurgeon at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, in Toronto, Ontario, pointed out, at this point, medicine has a better understanding of Alzheimer disease than it has ever had before. The key to taking advantage of that, Lipsman notes, is to collaborate across the lines of specialties within neurology. The establishment of a pipeline of communication between neurosurgeons, general neurologists, psychologists, and neuroscientists will be what spurs innovation in the space, he said.

Lipsman also spoke about using MR-guided focused ultrasound—which he and colleagues explored in a prospective, multi-center, single-arm study that evaluated the safety and efficacy of using low-frequency ultrasound to disrupt the blood-brain barrier in 6 patients with early-stage Alzheimer disease. He spoke about using it in 2 distinct ways. The first, to use it alone to open the blood-brain barrier in patients with mild-to-moderate Alzheimer disease to clear amyloid. The second, to use ultrasound as a therapeutic delivery strategy to enhance the delivery of other medications.