quote:

In the 30 years that biomedical researchers have worked determinedly to find a cure for Alzheimer’s disease, their counterparts have developed drugs that helped cut deaths from cardiovascular disease by more than half, and cancer drugs able to eliminate tumors that had been incurable. But for Alzheimer’s, not only is there no cure, there is not even a disease-slowing treatment.

The brain, Alzheimer’s researchers patiently explain, is hard — harder than the heart, harder even than cancer. While that may be true, it is increasingly apparent that there is another, more disturbing reason for the tragic lack of progress: The most influential researchers have long believed so dogmatically in one theory of Alzheimer’s that they systematically thwarted alternative approaches. Several scientists described those who controlled the Alzheimer’s agenda as “a cabal.”

In more than two dozen interviews, scientists whose ideas fell outside the dogma recounted how, for decades, believers in the dominant hypothesis suppressed research on alternative ideas: They influenced what studies got published in top journals, which scientists got funded, who got tenure, and who got speaking slots at reputation-buffing scientific conferences.

This stifling of competing ideas, say a growing number of scholars, is a big reason why there is no treatment for Alzheimer’s. (The four approved drugs have no effect on the disease, providing only a temporary memory boost.)

quote:

Contrary to a prevailing theory that has been recently called into question, new research from the University of Cincinnati (UC) bolsters a hypothesis that Alzheimer’s disease is caused by a decline in levels of a specific protein.

UC researchers led by Alberto Espay, MD, and Andrea Sturchio, MD, in collaboration with the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, published the research on October 4, 2022, in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease.

quote:

Neuroscience is a hot area these days, and schools that have a program in neuroscience announce it in big capital letters, so it shouldn't be tough finding a program. Finding a particular lab, however, is another story and the best option is often applying to the best program, because she will need education in broad areas of neuroscience to do any future research. My training at Hopkins was all over the place but the professors were really good. I wound up doing my early research in a lab that I really didn't like but from which I learned a lot of basics. That being said, if she found someone doing Alzheimer's research and he wanted her in his lab and was a good teacher, then great. Graduate training is an apprenticeship of sorts, in that you learn a lot about a certain area of science directly under the professor's supervision. But that may mean that she learn a lot about molecular biology, not Alzheimer's. You need to learn a lot of science before you can apply it to a problem. Most people in the sciences go on to do fellowships to concentrate on particular problems. And there is a chance that she may find herself much more interested in a different, also important, problem.

Many medical schools have excellent neuroscience programs these days, and the problems they address tend to be more clinically-related.

Maybe the quickest way to find Alzheimer's researchers is to do a search of papers in that area, and see where the authors are from.

Here is a list of graduate programs in neuroscience for the Society for Neuroscience. I do not know how inclusive it is.
https://my.sfn.org/Directories...rov=&country=&type=8