Taylor & Francis

Whilst at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London (AAIC; UK, 16–20 July 2017), Lauren Pulling (Editor, Neuro Central) sat down with Kim Mueller, a researcher from the Wisconsin Alzheimer’s Institute (University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA), whose abstract had been highlighted by the Association as one of note.

The work presented at AAIC investigated whether early memory decline correlates with changes in everyday speech. The results showed that subtle changes in speech – e.g., the use of short sentences, more pronouns, more frequent pauses and filler words – increased in line with development of early mild cognitive impairment, and therefore, further down the line, could be used as a marker for Alzheimer’s disease.

In this podcast, Kim discusses the study and its implications, including how these findings could one day be translated into new – potentially mobile – technology for at-home screening and disease monitoring.

You can view more podcasts, plus the latest news and interviews with experts across neurology and neuroscience, at www.neuro-central.com.

Listen to this interview with Philip A Philip from the Karmanos Cancer Center (MI, USA) to discover new strategies and agents for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. You can view more podcasts, plus the latest news and interviews with experts across oncology at www.oncology-central.com

The plenary sessions at Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC; London, UK, 16–20 July 2017) have featured fantastic talks from leading experts in the field, so far addressing topics including biomarkers, targeting beta-amyloid, genetics, big data and the neurotoxicity of tau.

While at the conference, Lauren Pulling (Editor, Neuro Central) sat down with Julie Williams, Professor of Neuropsychological Genetics at Cardiff University (UK) and the Chief Scientific Advisor of the Welsh Government, to hear more about her work on susceptibility genes in Alzheimer’s disease (AD).

You can view more podcasts, plus the latest news and interviews with experts across neurology and neuroscience, at www.neuro-central.com.

As part of the Neuro Central Spotlight of neuromodulation, we spoke to Jerrold Vitek, Professor of Neurology and a prominent voice in this ever-expanding field. Dr Vitek is currently the Head of the Neurology Department and Director of the Neuromodulation Research Program at the University of Minnesota (MN, USA), and is the PI for a number of non-human primate and human clinical studies on the neurophysiology of movement disorders and neuromodulation mechanisms.

In this interview, Dr Vitek tells us more about the work of the Neuromodulation Research Center, shares his perspective on how the field of neuromodulation has progressed in recent years, and discusses the challenges associated with refining and developing new neuromodulation therapies for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease.

You can view more podcasts, plus the latest news and interviews with experts across neurology and neuroscience, at www.neuro-central.com.

In this podcast, Jade Parker, Editor of Oncology Central speaks to Dirk Arnold. Dirk Arnold is Director of the Dept. Medical Oncology at Klinik für Tumorbiologie, Freiburg, Germany. Before taking this position, he was 2010 appointed as Director of the University Cancer Centre in Hamburg (UCCH) and held positions at the University Departments for Oncology and Haematology in Halle-Wittenberg and Berlin.

His major field of scientific interest are gastrointestinal cancers, and here specifically modern therapeutic approaches in biomarker-driven decision processes and multimodal treatment strategies.

In this interview find out about the main treatment options for oligometastic rectal cancer and how we can define a treatment strategy for this disease. Prof Arnold also tells us how he hopes to see the field progress in the next 5-10 years.

You can view more podcasts, plus the latest news and interviews with experts across oncology at www.oncology-central.com.

In this NCTalks podcast, Lauren Pulling, Editor of Neuro Central, is joined by Claude Wischik. Prof Wischik is board-certified in psychiatry and a professor of Old Age Psychiatry at the University of Aberdeen (UK). A pioneer in tau research, he discovered the tau protein compositional structure of Alzheimer’s tangles and established that it was possible to dissolve these tangles with pharmaceutically viable compounds that act as Tau Aggregation Inhibitors. Prof Wischik is also co-founder, chairman and chief executive of TauRx Therapeutics, which aims to develop new treatments for a range of neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease. In this interview, Prof Wischik discusses his 30 years’ experience in the field, the latest developments at TauRx, and what we can expect from tau research the next 10 years.

You can view more podcasts, plus the latest news and interviews with experts across neurology and neuroscience, at www.neuro-central.com.

How can we bring Parkinson’s disease into the age of personalized medicine? One such approach recently described by Alberto Espay (University of Cincinnati, OH, USA) is to subtype the disease according to the presence of certain biomarkers. This is an approach that he says could “up the ante in our ability to modify the disease”, moving us away from purely dopaminergic strategies that address only the ‘common denominator’ of the disease. We caught up with Dr Espay at the American Academy of Neurology Annual Meeting (Boston, MA, USA, 22–28 April), where he told us more about his call for a biomarker-driven approach to subtyping Parkinson’s, and how this could change the way we both research and treat the disease.

You can find more podcasts, as well as the latest news and expert opinions across neuroscience and neurology, at www.neuro-central.com

Whilst at the AAN Annual Meeting (Boston, MA, USA, 22–28 April) last month, we caught up with Regina Katzenschlager, Medical University Vienna and Danube Hospital (both Vienna, Austria), whose research into the use of apomorphine for Parkinson’s disease was highlighted at the conference as one to watch.

In this interview, Regina tells us more about the recent Phase III trial, which provided evidence that the drug apomorphine, first produced in 1865, could be effective in the management of advanced Parkinson’s disease. Study data demonstrated that patients given apomorhpine infusion had a significantly greater reduction in ‘off’ time compared with those who were given a placebo infusion. Regina also discusses how she anticipates these recent findings could change the way clinicians prescribe apomorphine to patients.

You can find more podcasts, as well as the latest news across neurology and neuroscience, at www.neuro-central.com

Helen McShane discusses her work leading the TB vaccine research program at Oxford University, and shares her thoughts on the challenges facing vaccine development and eradication of this disease.

Listen to this interview with Peter Stern (University of Manchester, UK) to discover more about chemotherapy resistance in acute lymphoblastic leukemia and novel strategies to overcome it.