Milan Fiala, MD, receives 2008 Alzheimer Award

Journal of Alzheimer's Disease annual award for outstanding contribution

Dr. Milan Fiala, recipient of the 2008 Alzheimer Award. Click here for more information.

Milan Fiala, MD, UCLA Orthopedic Hospital, has been chosen as the recipient of the 2008 Alzheimer Award presented by the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease in recognition of his outstanding work, "Phagocytosis of amyloid-beta and inflammation: Two faces of innate immunity in Alzheimer’s disease" by M. Fiala, D.H. Cribbs, M. Rosenthal and G. Bernard (July 2007, JAD 11(4): 457-63). Each year the Associate Editors of the journal select an outstanding article from the previous year's volume for this prestigious award.

“I am very grateful for the recognition of our laboratory’s work by the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease,” said Dr. Fiala. “This award belongs to all of my collaborators as well.”

Dr. Fiala’s work suggests that Alzheimer’s disease is a failure of the immune system to keep the brain clear from waste products of neuronal chemistries (the most important waste is called amyloid-beta, in particular “oligomeric” amyloid-beta in neurons). This concept of Alzheimer’s disease can be compared to uremia when kidneys fail to clear the uremic waste products of body chemistries. In the brain, clearance of waste is difficult because the transport mechanisms across the brain “firewall” (called the “blood-brain barrier”) are restricted. The immune cells have the ability to cross the firewall, clean amyloid-beta and protect neurons, but in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, these cells somehow lose the ability to keep neurons healthy. In fact, these immune cells may be over-doing the cleaning task and become inflamed, and then cause damage to the brain as they do to an inflamed joint. Fortunately, in parallel with these mechanistic discoveries, Dr. Fiala’s collaborative research is showing that the immune system of patients can be improved, at least in a test tube, using natural products, such as curcuminoids from turmeric. Therefore, Dr. Fiala is developing a blood test of immune deficiency (so-called “amyloid-beta stress test”) and new ways of immune treatment as an all-inclusive approach to Alzheimer’s disease detection and prevention.