Los Angeles October 2, 2008
Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Third Annual
Drug Repositioning Summit: Finding New Routes to Success
October 6-7, 2008 Boston, MA
Keynote Presentation:
“Repurposing of Enbrel® for Alzheimer’s Disease”
At Cambridge Healthtech Institute’s Third Annual Drug Repositioning Summit on Monday, October 6 in Boston, the audience is scheduled to hear, as a Keynote Presentation, the story of how an individual physician has charted an entirely new course for a therapeutic which is already one of the most successful of all time.
Enbrel® (etanercept) has proven effective for treating a host of medical conditions, from rheumatoid arthritis to psoriasis, generating more than $4 billion dollars per year in revenue for its owner, Amgen. Yet despite this success Amgen has failed to initiate study of etanercept’s emerging off-label uses in the field of neurology, which could potentially address enormous unmet medical needs and help people throughout the world. Etanercept is one of a new class of medications, produced through biotechnology, which specifically neutralize an immune signaling molecule called TNF. Excess TNF is centrally involved in scores of diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, Alzheimer’s, sciatica pain, and psoriasis. In Alzheimer’s disease excess TNF has been documented in the cerebrospinal fluid, and the rationale for anti-TNF treatment is supported by genetic, epidemiologic, basic science, and clinical data[1-11].
The Keynote Presentation, entitled “Repurposing of Enbrel for Alzheimer’s Disease” will be made by Edward Tobinick MD, Director of the Institute for Neurological Research, a private medical group, inc. in Los Angeles. Dr. Tobinick is the inventor and patent holder of the etanercept off-label indication for Alzheimer’s Disease, as well as more than 200 different inventions involving new off-label uses of TNF blockers, such as etanercept, in neurology, opthalmology, and for a variety of additional innovative clinical indications[12-17]. Many of the novel uses of etanercept which Dr. Tobinick invented, beginning nearly a decade ago, such as for sciatica, Alzheimer’s, and myasthenia gravis, have subsequently been supported by peer-reviewed, published studies performed by independent researchers from academic centers across the globe[18-26]. As an example, a recently completed, double-blind, placebo-controlled study conducted by independent researchers at Johns Hopkins/Walter Reed Army Medical Center has confirmed the efficacy of etanercept for sciatica, using a patented, perispinal method of administration of etanercept which Dr. Tobinick invented[27].
Dr. Tobinick has been invited to and has presented his clinical and research findings at multiple prestigious medical research meetings, including this year’s International Congress on Alzheimer’s Disease (ICAD 2008), the 7th International Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Conference; at the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Sweden, the home of the Nobel Prize in medicine; and in multiple, peer-reviewed, published medical articles[1-5, 27-31]. His published, peer-reviewed scientific articles have been cited by more than 150 scientific publications from around the world[1-6, 18, 20, 23-25, 32, 33]. In addition, his groundbreaking work has been recognized by the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives, the world’s leading organization of neuroscientists, which counts among its members ten Nobel Laureates[34]; by leading journals, including Nature Clinical Practice Neurology[35]; by the Faculty of 1000 Biology, the expert guide to the most important advances in biology[36]; and featured in news articles from around the world[37-39].
