Chris Patil of Ouroboros reports from the latest Hillblom Foundation meeting: "most of the scholars represented were studying either some aspect of pancreatic islet biology or a neurodegenerative disease. Basic biologists of aging per se were fewer and further between, though there were a couple of excellent worm talks from Andy Dillin from the Salk, and Laura Mitic from the Kenyon lab at UCSF. Probably the most exciting talk at the meeting was from Irvin's Charlie Glabe, whose lab is developing antibodies targeted at amyloid Abeta oligomers (increasingly, the form considered likely to be the primary pathologic species in Alzheimer's disease [AD]). ... Passive immunization, in which a patient is given the antibody directly, rather than immunized against the toxic molecule and left to develop their own antibodies, seems to be the main direction for immunologically based AD treatments."
Link: http://ouroboros.wordpress.com/2006/11/10/hillblom-foundation-meeting-report/