Dr. Lon Schneider receives new $3.5 million RO1

Dr. Lon Schneider’s most recent R01 is a 5-year, $3.5-million award from the National Institute of Aging (NIA) to assess the potential for an extended-release formulation of phenserine to inhibit preprogrammed neuron death in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) using a Phase 1b ascending dose platform. Schneider and his co- investigators, Nigel Grieg of the NIA Intramural Research Center in Baltimore, and Clive Ballard at the University of Exeter, UK, will test the delivery of four ascending daily doses of phenserine given over 12 weeks in order to establish a safe and tolerated dose. Positive results in the expected direction will support phenserine’s expected actions and advancement to a Phase 2 proof of concept trial.
Translation? Schneider and his colleagues are paving the way for a new “neuroprotective” therapy that holds the promise to prevent otherwise doomed neurons from dying in patients with AD. No effective drugs exist to prevent, delay, or effectively treat the 5 million Americans currently diagnosed with AD. With projects totaling 11- 16 million Alzheimer sufferers within two decades, the need for effective therapies has never been greater. Phenserine may just be the salve that AD sufferers and their families have been desperately searching for.
But Dr. Schneider is not new to this fight. He has been working to defeat AD for decades. He was PI of the National Institute of Mental Health’s seminal CATIE-AD program, a multicenter effectiveness trial of atypical antipsychotics in AD; the companion study to the CATIE schizophrenia program. Currently, he directs the USC California Alzheimer’s Disease Center and the USC NIH Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center clinical core. Moreover, he is co-PI on three other current R01 awards, including one with Terry Goldberg at Columbia and Phil Harvey at the University of Miami to develop easily administered neuropsychological measures that are resistant to practice effects for use in prevention studies; and another with Richard Kennedy and Gary Cutter at the University of Alabama, Birmingham, using a novel approach to drug repurposing for large-scale data mining or discovery, and then applying the algorithms to concomitant medications of participants in clinical trials to determine the medications that might show efficacy or promise. He has served as a senior scientific advisor to the director of NIMH, on the American Psychiatric Association’s Committee for Practice Guidelines in Alzheimer’s and Other Dementia, as well as the World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry’s
Task Force on Dementia. He has been editor-in-chief of Alzheimer’s & Dementia: Translational Research and Clinical Interventions and is an associate editor or editorial board member of the Cochrane Dementia and Cognitive Improvement Group, Current Alzheimer Research, Alzheimer’s & Dementia, The Lancet Neurology, and Clinical Neuropharmacology, among others. He has authored a myriad of papers and chapters on AD and related topics and has disseminated research findings at conferences too many to enumerate.
Translation? Dr. Schneider is a translational scientist par excellence; someone whom patients and their families can rely on to advance science to change the course of AD and improve lives. We congratulate Dr. Schneider on his prominent NIA award, and extend our wishes on successful implementation in the hopes of a brighter future for those suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease.