Michael G Agadjanya
University of California, USA
Title: Active vaccination strategies to prevent and reverse Alzheimer’s Disease (AD)
Biography
Biography: Michael G Agadjanya
Abstract
Traditional vaccination against infectious diseases relies on generation of cellular and humoral immune responses that actrnto protect the host from overt disease even although they do not induce sterilizing immunity. More recently, attempts havernbeen made with mixed success to generate therapeutic vaccines against a wide range of non-infectious diseases including allergy,rncancer, diabetes, drug addiction and autoimmune diseases, amongst others. However, amongst the most radical innovations wasrntherapeutic vaccination for neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and Parkinson’s disease. Followingrnthe exciting first report in 1999 of successful vaccine prevention of progression of an AD animal model, various vaccines targetingrnbeta amyloid (Aβ) have progressed to human clinical trials, with mixed results. More recently, AD vaccines based on tau proteinrnhave advanced into clinical testing.rnWhile a successful AD vaccine remains tantalizing close the mixed results obtained so far in clinical trials of AD vaccinesrnincluding many difficulties and misconceptions encountered on the path to a successful AD vaccine will be presented. Morernspecifically, we will discuss requirement of (i) better standardization of immunological efficacy measures of anti-Aβ and anti-taurnvaccines, (ii) better methods to improve vaccine immunogenicity such as novel adjuvants and the design of AD vaccines, (iii) thernmost promising strategies for using active immunization targeting Aβ and/or tau pathological proteins for prophylaxis and/orrnprevention of early AD progression.