Paul Newhouse, MD: Attacking Different Targets in Alzheimer

“When we treat cancer, we don’t just treat 1 biological mechanism…we have to think of that as the standard approach in Alzheimer.”

Reisa A. Sperling, MD, MMSc, the director of the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, uses the term “COMBAT” to describe the needed approach to treat Alzheimer disease. Paul Newhouse, MD, enjoys the acronym.

Short for COMbined Alzheimer Treatments, it explains the multi-faceted approach that Newhouse and many other experts in the field believe is the proper way to address the neurodegenerative condition. Newhouse himself likened it to what is currently done in cancer treatment, where therapies are targeted at myriad biological processes. Newhouse himself presented data on a phase I exploration of a single dose and a dose escalation of the putative cognitive enhancer VU319, a muscarinic M1-positive allosteric modulator.

At the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation’s 19th Annual Meeting in Jersey City, New Jersey, the Jim Turner Chair in Cognitive Disorders at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine sat with NeurologyLive to discuss what this approach should entail, and his feelings on the early phase treatments presented at the meeting.