Whether it's neuroscience or baseball, there's a Yogi Berra quote to fit every situation - at least in Dr. Rudolph Tanzi's experience.
In Tanzi's chosen field, the genetics that influence diseases of the brain, and specifically, Alzheimer's disease, the late baseball great's words are always applicable.
In the years before Tanzi and other researchers were able to pinpoint beta-amyloid protein as the cause of the "tangles" that cause Alzheimer's, researchers were testing scores of drugs in order to try to stop the amyloid from forming, and none worked, discouraging many from continuing to pursue the possibility, Tanzi said.
Or, as Berra would put it: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded."
So researchers moved away from trying to stop amyloid. Then it was discovered that the amyloid plaque that forms to cause Alzheimer's begins appearing in the brain up to 20 years before the onset of Alzheimer's symptoms. Now there is a test, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, that can detect the presence of amyloid in the brain.
As Berra would say, "You can observe a lot by just watching."
Tanzi, the Joseph P. and Rose F. Kennedy chaired professor of neurology at Harvard University and the vice chairman of neurology and director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, shared his love for sports quotes and his work as one of the foremost Alzheimer's researchers during a lecture Wednesday at the University of Charleston.
The event, hosted by the National Youth Science Foundation and the UC School of Pharmacy, was to honor Tanzi as the 2015 Alumnus of the Year for the National Youth Science Camp, an international camp held each year in West Virginia that Tanzi attended as a recent high school graduate in 1976.
Tanzi, who grew up in Rhode Island, was the first in his family to go to college, and at 18, thought he was going to be an ophthalmologist.
"I was just really into eyes; I thought it would be cool," he said. "I went to camp, and it was the first time I'd ever met scientists. I'd never met scientists before."
Now a scientist himself, Tanzi has a long list of accomplishments, including that he co-discovered three of the first Alzheimer's disease genes in 1986, and has since identified several others through the Alzheimer's Genome Project, a program he directs. One of Tanzi's first discoveries was of the gene that causes Huntington's disease, the first disease gene found by genetic linkage analysis. Tanzi has since participated in the discovery of several other neurological disease genes, including the gene that causes Wilson's Disease.
But for decades, researchers were at odds as to whether the Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP), the gene Tanzi helped discover and the one that causes the formation of beta-amyloid plaques, really caused the disease. That is, until Tanzi and his team used Alzheimer's genes to create a three-dimensional neural culture system, derived from human cells, that allowed scientists to observe the development of Alzheimer's plaque and tangle pathology for the first time - a discovery that has dramatically increased the speed of drug recovery and reduced the costs. This discovery, dubbed "Alzheimer's-in-a-Dish," was granted the 2015 Smithsonian American Ingenuity Award.
"Alzheimer's-in-a-Dish" has given Tanzi a reason to be optimistic about a cure for Alzheimer's disease. Massachusetts General has made the model widely available to researchers across the world, and is in the process of testing more than 1,000 different drugs simultaneously using the "Alzheimer's-in-a-Dish" method.
"We're also finding drugs that stop the tangles, even though there's amyloid," he said. "We could never do this before until we had this system. We're really excited, and we're really optimistic."
The National Youth Science Camp is an honors program that brings two top students from every state in the U.S. and others from around the world to West Virginia to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics with preeminent scientists for a month in the summer. It was created in 1963 as part of the state's centennial celebration, and has produced several renowned science and technology professionals, including Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer; Wesley Bush; CEO of global aerospace and defense technology company Northrop Grumman; and David Thompson, CEO of Orbital ATK, a company that contracts and builds for NASA.
Since its inception, the science camp has been held annually in Pocahontas County. In June, the foundation secured the Research and Education Center, a LEED-certified, state-of-the-art facility in Tucker County. For more information, visit www.davis.nysf.com.
Reach Lydia Nuzum
at lydia.nuzum@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5189 or
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