Solving Four of the World’s Health Problems

By Dale Bredesen, M.D., Chief Scientific Officer for Apollo Health

For all the ongoing world ills and tensions, there is some good news: there is remarkable progress ongoing in health, in the understanding of complex human physiology, and in what is limiting our healthspans. After watching medical progress (and in many cases, non-progress) over the past 50 years, I am more optimistic than ever, and the exciting data just continue to pour in. So here are 4 truly Earth-shattering advances that should address some of the most pressing health problems in the world today:

1. Alzheimer’s. About 40 million people are living with Alzheimer’s worldwide, and that number is expected to reach 150 million just 25 years from now. But effective tools are now at hand — 90% of those treated in our clinical trial showed improvement, there is increasing awareness of the need for prevention and early treatment, the new blood tests offer early warning, and the new knowledge we have gained from years of research and the clinical trials helps us to focus on new and important therapeutic targets. This has led to two new candidates, both of which represent new classes of drugs for Alzheimer’s: the first is DDL-218, which negates the effect of ApoE4 (and is based on the research of Dr. Ram Rao), the common Alzheimer’s risk gene present in 25% of the population, but 65% of patients with Alzheimer’s. Imagine that we could prevent the vast majority of these cases of Alzheimer’s by negating the risk associated with ApoE4! I believe that will be possible, and in fact, we are actively raising support for a clinical trial of this new drug candidate, which would be used along with the ReCODE protocol for optimal effect. 

The second novel candidate is FAH65-, which is an ASBI, that is, an APP-selective BACE inhibitor. BACE inhibitors have been tried for Alzheimer’s in the past, but have failed because the enzyme BACE cleaves several different proteins, not just the amyloid precursor, so stopping it altogether makes little sense (kind of like trying to stop pneumonia by not breathing — you need to allow the normal function to occur). But we spent years in the lab trying to develop a new approach, in which we design a therapeutic that only stops BACE from cleaving APP, but not from cleaving its other targets, and we have it now. This would also be used in conjunction with ReCODE, and for those who are ApoE4+, also with DDL-218. So we are really backing Alzheimer’s into a corner, impacting all of the various mechanisms it uses to destroy synapses in the brain. I am more optimistic than ever that, working together, we all will be able to reduce that prediction of 150 million patients with Alzheimer’s in 2050 by 90% or more. We are all witnessing the transition of Alzheimer’s disease from hopeless and terminal to hopeful, treatable, preventable, and ultimately optional. 

2. Cancer. About ten million people die from cancer each year, and we have all been touched by this illness, whether directly or indirectly. The saddest, most difficult days I ever had during medical training were those working with children and young people with leukemia and other cancers. Thankfully, major strides have been made with immunotherapy and with precision medicine, but the death toll from cancer continues. As many know, the common response to treatment is an initial response, but then a recurrence a few years later, with much less therapeutic response the second time around. I hope that is going to change — my old friend and colleague, Dr. Vishu Lingappa, has developed a new approach that won a national award last year because of its novelty. This is “ODAC”: one drug for all cancers, which has shown efficacy against all cancers tested to date (about 100 so far), as well as showing efficacy against late-stage tumors. I hope that this type of approach will address the dire need for effective treatments for cancer recurrences. So far, it looks very promising.  

3. Pandemics. Global deaths from a single pandemic, COVID-19, have reached over thirty million, and there will undoubtedly be new pandemics in the future. What if we had a ready-made solution to every pandemic, and to every new strain of SARS-CoV-2? As hard to believe as that is — yes, it does indeed sound too good to be true — there is a new therapeutic candidate that targets every respiratory virus, from SARS-CoV-2 (every strain) to influenza to the RSV that is such a problem in babies — ALL respiratory viruses. It has already been shown to be far superior to Paxlovid, and this is another candidate that is ready to move to clinical trials. I hope that within the next several years, we will all be able to take a few days of oral treatment with this new candidate any time we have symptoms that suggest a respiratory virus, no matter which one or which strain — what a step forward!

4. Antibiotic resistance. Estimates suggest that antibiotic resistance may be associated with almost five million deaths each year. Antibiotics like penicillin and cephalosporin have saved millions since their appearance nearly a century ago, but bacteria have developed numerous mechanisms of resistance, such as inactivating the antibiotic (for example, with penicillinase), pumping the antibiotics out of the bacterial cells, preventing the entry of the antibiotics, or mutating the target of the antibiotic. The development of antibiotic resistance has become so common that it is now considered a global health threat, without any significant current resolution. But the same approach that led to the respiratory virus treatment I mentioned above has identified a therapeutic candidate that destroys resistant bacteria, which could save millions of lives.

As we all learn more about precision medicine, functional medicine, and systems biology, new targets for optimal treatment are being revealed, and combining these personalized protocols with the new targets should lead to a whole new wave of success. In the coming years, we should see a dramatic reduction in deaths due to Alzheimer’s-related dementia, cancer recurrence, pandemics, and antibiotic-resistant bacteria. That is the promise of 21^st-century medicine.