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---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alzheimer's drug could be on market within a decade ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- LEEDS, England (September 9, 1997 01:33 a.m. EDT) - A leading scientist said Monday that advances in gene technology could lead to drug treatment for Alzheimer's disease in the next decade. Techniques for detecting people at risk from the degenerative disease will be ready even earlier, reseachers told Britain's main annual science convention. But these tests are unlikely to be used for ethical reasons until effective drugs are on the market. Sir Richard Sykes, director and chief executive of drug maker Glaxo Wellcome Plc, was asked by reporters when he expected effective medication to be ready. "I would think that, at the pace at which things are moving, something should come from that research in the next few years," he said. "There could be a drug on the market in the next five to 10 years." Sykes said recent advances in understanding the link between genes and disease had provided the key to breakthroughs in diagnosis and drug design. Developments in technology to allow thousands of tests of samples of DNA, the basic building block of life, to be placed on a single chip would speed up testing incredibly, he said. This would eventually allow accurate identification of people suffering from diseases such as Huntington's chorea, a hereditary disease characterized by dementia whose victims included folk singer Woody Guthrie. "In more complex diseases such as Alzheimer's senile dementia, the identification of genetic polymorphisms (mutations) associated with the disease will not only allow identification of the individuals at risk but ... may also throw new light upon the mechanisms underlying the conditions," Sykes said. "This in turn could lead the way to the discovery of new medicines to treat or prevent the diseases," he said. Copyright 1997 Nando.net Copyright 1997 Reuter Information Service <http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/090997/health22_14470_noframes.html> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [log in to unmask]