Rethinking the amyloid dogma in Alzheimer’s disease

Interviewer: Prof. George Perry is a neuroscientist at the University of Texas at San Antonio, recognized for his research on Alzheimer's disease. His work focuses on oxidative stress and the molecular mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration. We've invited Prof. Perry to discuss his broader perspective on Alzheimer's as a chronic disease. Prof. Perry, thank you very much for your time today. Prof. Perry: Thank you very much for inviting me to present today. Interviewer: My first question would be what led you to adopt a broader chronic disease perspective on Alzheimer's, and were there particular findings or experiments that shifted your view away from the so-called mainstream amyloid-centered model? Prof. Perry: The reason I adopted a more chronic homeostatic view of Alzheimer's disease stems from two aspects. First, the data. That you could view Alzheimer's disease as amyloid-centric, amyloid cascade stems from that. mitochondrial-centric, tau-centric. The list goes on. There have probably been at least 30 different proposals, and none of them adequately explain the disease. The second one is my training as a biologist, a marine biologist, is to understand biochemical processes and physiology in the context of the environment, and just like any other organisms, humans are adapted to their environment and make many compensations to survive. With that in mind, I began to think of Alzheimer's disease a lot like other chronic diseases that involve many, many changes,