Precision Medicine News

Free Gene Therapy Available for Patients with Alzheimer’s

Maximum Life Foundation is offering free gene therapy for ten qualifying patients with early to mid-stage Alzheimer’s.

Free gene therapy available for patients with Alzheimer's

Source: Thinkstock

By Jessica Kent

- Maximum Life Foundation (MaxLife), a non-profit organization focused on aging research, is providing a promising free gene therapy for ten patients with Alzheimer’s disease.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s disease is the sixth leading cause of death in the US. Over five million Americans have the condition, leading to costs of $277 billion a year.

With this gene therapy, researchers have seen improvements in Alzheimer’s symptoms and the recovery of normal brain functions in experiments with mice. In human cell experiments, the therapy had the same effects through the rejuvenation of microglia, the brain’s first line of defense against infection, and neurons.

In August 2018, a patient received a low dose of the therapy with no adverse side effects. To date, the patient’s disease hasn’t progressed.

“MaxLife will grant 100 percent of the therapy costs to help bring pioneering gene therapy to cure this disease and make Alzheimer’s disease a thing of the past,” said David Kekich, MaxLife’s CEO.

Studies have proven that aging is the leading factor in many life-threatening diseases, including Alzheimer’s. This new gene therapy aims to treat the cellular degeneration caused by aging.

The new treatment is offered by Integrated Health Systems, a gene therapy facilitator that is seeking to treat other adult aging-related diseases with no known cure, including sarcopenia, chronic kidney disease, and atherosclerosis.

“This technology could halt many of the big age-associated killers in industrialized countries,” said Kekich. “Compassionate care helps patients with no other option to get access to experimental therapies that may benefit both themselves and society as a whole.”

Other healthcare organizations have stressed the need to leverage gene therapies and precision medicine to improve treatment for Alzheimer’s and other diseases. A recent study published in Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience discussed how precision medicine tactics will help improve cognitive disease treatment.

“Taking a precision medicine approach, the question is no longer ‘Does treatment × work?’ but ‘Who does treatment × work for?’ Identifying the characteristics of ‘non-responders’ becomes as important as ‘responders’ in understanding the impact of a particular intervention,” the team said.  

“Such an approach may result in considerable health benefits by allowing more effective selection of individuals for treatments based on a priori known profiles of disease risk and their potential response to treatment.”

Researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) also recently discovered that certain genetic variants may help protect individuals against Alzheimer’s disease, a finding that could hold important implications for precision medicine therapies.

The team studied a patient who carried a mutation in a gene known to cause early onset Alzheimer’s but didn’t show signs of mild cognitive impairment until her seventies. This is nearly three decades after the typical age of onset. Evaluating this patient, and patients like her, could help researchers understand more about the progression of Alzheimer’s.

“This single case opens a new door for treatments of Alzheimer’s disease, based more on the resistance to Alzheimer’s pathology rather than on the cause of the disease. In other words, not necessarily focusing on reduction of pathology, as it has been done traditionally in the field, but instead promoting resistance even in the face of significant brain pathology,” said Yakeel T. Quiroz, PhD, clinical neuropsychologist and neuroimaging researcher at MGH.

With the new gene therapy, MaxLife will add to the growing body of research exploring the use of precision medicine and genetics in chronic disease treatment.

“If we can prove a benefit to patients that have no other option now, we can potentially treat Alzheimer’s disease in people in early to mid-stage Alzheimer’s, finally creating effective medicine at the cellular level,” states Kekich. “If successful, this treatment could potentially be used on other diseases such as Parkinson’s and ALS.”

To apply for a free therapy or for more information, click here.