Brain Disease Early Detection Benefits

A Brief History

We’ve been officially at war with brain diseases for ages! How long?

• Lewy Body Dementia (LBD) was named in 1976,
• Alzheimer’s in 1906
• Parkinson’s was in 1817

That’s over 200 years (or 8 generations if you’re into genealogy).

Of course, we’re not even counting the previous centuries when brain diseases namelessly devasted human lives.

So, have we been fighting hard?🤺

Research efforts so far

Spending

In 2019, the National Institute of Health (NIH) spent:

• $66 million on LBD research
• $224 million on Parkinson’s research
• $2.4 billion (yes, with a “B”) on Alzheimer’s research 

Clinical Trials

As of April 2021, there have been:

LBD

• 131 clinical trials in various stages

Alzheimer’s 

• 2,574 clinical trials in various stages

Parkinson’s

• 2,891 clinical trials in various stages

Bottom Line:

What did we get for our three decades of hard work and $100 billion in brain disease drug development?

Zilch! 

We have no cure so far.

Not a single drug has passed FDA approval.

So, why aren’t we winning?

Here are 3 critical reasons:

1. We only get to look at the brain disease when the patient shows symptoms. This is the late stage. Discover the benefits of treating the disease in the early stages. ⬇️
2. The only samples scientists get to analyze are from cadavers. 😬
3. So, we are left to reverse engineer the aftermath of destruction.

It’s like someone giving you a plate of crumbs, telling you they are the remnants of a quiche, and asking you how it was made.👩‍🍳

It boils down to this:

Up until now, scientists had no early intel!

To create a breakpoint, we desperately need a new paradigm.

Early detection is the pivot point

Big sky thinking

Let us paint a picture for you:

Imagine a cloudless summer night. You take a Jeep off-road, away from the city, and then turn off the engine. You gaze heavenward.  The starry sky is breathtakingly clear. 🌌

Now, compare what you see with the astonishing elements the Hubble detects looking at the same section of space. 🔭

The difference is obvious. The Hubble amplifies and magnifies beyond human vision capabilities. The powerful telescope reaches beyond the earth’s atmosphere, capturing vivid details, free and clear of the earth’s atmospheric distortions. ✨

Wasn’t that fun? Astronomy’s so neat. 

Now let’s connect this to brain science.

We’ve been studying brain disease as if we were trying to understand the stars by only looking up from ground level.

The earth’s atmosphere is similar to something called the blood-brain barrier. Since the diseases attack the brain, we need to get an up-close-and-personal look early, beyond that blood-brain barrier.

Remember the 80s movie INNERSPACE, where scientists minimized themselves and traveled throughout the body?

Fast forward three decades later, science fiction is now a scientific fact. Our scientists took a fascinating research journey, deep in the territory beyond the blood-brain barrier.