BIRMINGHAM, Ala. /PRNewswire/ — Acclinate, an expert in health equity through inclusive research, is collaborating with Merck, known as MSD outside the United States and Canada, to help increase participation by members of the Black/African American community in Merck’s oncology clinical studies.

“We’re proud to be working with Merck because being a champion for health equity through inclusive research takes strategic orientation and proactiveness. We look forward to seeing how our continued collaboration can positively impact patients,” said Del Smith, CEO and Co-Founder of Acclinate.

As part of the initiative, Acclinate will utilize its NOWINCLUDED platform, a trusted health education and engagement source created by and for the Black/African American community. NOWINCLUDED offers access to health information and resources around disorders that disproportionately affect communities of color and provides a space for community members to share their experiences and connect. With a wealth of original and curated content, NOWINCLUDED is designed to build trust between healthcare providers and people from historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups to empower them to make better-informed health decisions, including considering clinical trial participation.

Additionally, Acclinate will contribute its proprietary predictive analytics tool, e-DICT (Enhanced Diversity in Clinical Trials), that provides real-time reporting on community access and engagement activities and insights into potential participants. It also offers key features such as displaying access potential, tracking engagement and mobilization progress and is driven by a patent-pending Participation Probability Index (PPI) that assesses the likelihood of community members participating in clinical research.

“Community engagement is a key step toward increasing diversity in clinical trials,” said Adrelia Allen, Executive Director, Clinical Trial Patient Diversity, Merck. “We’re excited to collaborate with Acclinate to raise awareness among the Black/African American community of available clinical trials for people with cancer. It is important that our research appropriately reflects the communities we serve.”

About Acclinate

Acclinate is a digital health company that is working to improve health equity through predictive analytics technology and community engagement. We combine empowered community building in diverse demographics with data analysis to help pharmaceutical companies actively increase representation in their clinical trials and other healthcare organizations support inclusivity in their initiatives. Acclinate is a catalyst that turns trust and data into products that better serve communities of color. For more information on Acclinate, visit www.acclinate.com and connect with us on LinkedIn. To learn more about NOWINCLUDED and join the community built for healthier communities of color, visit www.NOWINCLUDED.com and follow us on Instagram.

Acclinate media contact:

SOURCE Acclinate

Newswise — INDIANAPOLIS – A pioneering Alzheimer’s disease study led by Indiana University School of Medicine researchers is the focus of a special issue of Alzheimer’s & Dementia, the journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Led by IU School of Medicine’s Liana G. Apostolova, MD, the Longitudinal Early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease Study (LEADS) is the largest and most comprehensive study of early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, which to this point has been an under-studied condition, in the United States. The study began in 2018 with over $44 million in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging (NIA).

Dustin B. Hammers, PhD, an associate professor of neurology at the IU School of Medicine and the lead neuropsychologist on the LEADS study, said given that so little has been established about early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers strove to choose pieces for the special issue that characterized the condition according to its presentation clinically, cognitively, genetically, and from a biological-marker perspective. The latter includes using MRI and PET imaging and cerebrospinal fluid measurement to look at hallmark changes in the brain related to temporal lobe atrophy and the presence of β-amyloid and tau proteins.

“Smaller studies have long suggested that early-onset Alzheimer’s disease may present differently than traditional-onset Alzheimer’s disease, but until the LEADS study, concerns related to study sample or methods interfered with interpretation,” said Hammers, who is also the principal investigator on the NIA- and Alzheimer’s Association- funded LEADS-sub-study Lifestyle Interventions for the Treatment of Early-Onset AD Study (LITES). “With this special issue on LEADS, the reader is provided a collection of findings on the most well-characterized sample of patients with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, all in one place. Our goal with this special issue was to permit the reader to have a more thorough understanding of early-onset Alzheimer’s after reading it.”

Hammers said none of this research could have occurred without the visionary leadership of Apostolova and other principal investigators Maria C. Carrillo, PhD, of the Alzheimer’s Association; Brad Dickerson, MD, of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School; and Gil Rabinovici, MD, of the University of California San Francisco; as well as the generous support of the NIA and the Alzheimer’s Association.

Journal Link: Alzheimer’s & Dementia

Source: Indiana University

Newswise — University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered how Lactobacillus, a bacterium found in fermented foods and yogurt, helps the body manage stress and may help prevent depression and anxiety. The findings open the door to new therapies to treat anxiety, depression and other mental-health conditions.

The new research from UVA’s Alban Gaultier, Ph.D., and collaborators is notable because it pinpoints the role of Lactobacillus, separating it out from all the other microorganisms that naturally live in and on our bodies. These organisms are collectively known as the microbiota, and scientists have increasingly sought to target them to battle disease and improve our health. UVA’s new research represents a major step forward in that effort, providing scientists an innovative new approach to understand the role of individual microbes that could facilitate the development of new treatments and cures for a wide variety of diseases, both mental and physical.

“Our discovery illuminates how gut-resident Lactobacillus influences mood disorders, by tuning the immune system,” said Gaultier, of UVA’s Department of Neuroscience, the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia (BIG Center) and the TransUniversity Microbiome Initiative. “Our research could pave the way towards discovering much-needed therapeutics for anxiety and depression.”

The Microbiota and Depression

Our guts are naturally home to countless bacteria, fungi, and viruses. There are more microorganisms living in and on us than there are cells in our bodies. That may sound disgusting, even alarming, but scientists have increasingly realized that these tiny organisms and their endless interactions are critical to our immune systems’ health, our mental health, and many other facets of our well-being. Disruptions of the microbiota, whether from illness, poor diet, or other causes, are known to contribute to many diseases and even help cancer spread. So, researchers have been hugely excited in recent years about the potential to battle diseases by targeting the microbiota.

Early attempts to manipulate the gut flora with beneficial bacteria, called probiotics, have produced mixed results. A big part of the problem has been the sheer complexity of the microbiome. It’s estimated that there are 39 trillion microorganisms inside each of us, so trying to understand what specific bacteria or fungi do – much less how they interact with all the other microorganisms and their host – can be like trying to count grains of sand on the beach.

Gaultier and his team took an innovative approach to hone in on Lactobacilli in specific. Prior research from Gaultier’s lab suggested that the bacteria could reverse depression in lab mice – a hugely promising finding. But the researchers needed to understand how.

“We were aware from our prior research that Lactobacillus was beneficial in improving mood disorders and was lost following psychological stress, but the underlying reasons remained unclear, primarily due to the technical challenges associated with studying the microbiome.”

Gaultier and his team decided to continue their depression research using a collection of bacteria, known as Altered Schaedler Flora, which includes two strains of Lactobacillus and six other bacterial strains. With this rarely used bacterial community, the team was able to create mice both with and without Lactobacillus,circumventing the need for antibiotics.  

Sure enough, the Altered Schaedler Flora produced exciting results. Gaultier and his colleagues were able to explain exactly how Lactobacilli influence behavior, and how a lack of the bacteria can worsen depression and anxiety. Lactobacilli in the family Lactobaccillacea, they found, maintain the levels of an immune mediator called interferon gamma that regulates the body’s response to stress and helps stave off depression.  

Armed with this information, researchers are poised to develop new ways to prevent and treat depression and other mental-health conditions in which Lactobacillus plays an important role. For example, patients struggling with (or at risk for) depression might one day take specially formulated probiotic supplements that will optimize their levels of helpful Lactobacillus.

“With these results in hand, we have new tools to optimize the development of probiotics, which should speed up discoveries for novel therapies,” said researcher Andrea R. Merchak, Ph.D. “Most importantly, we can now explore how maintaining a healthy level of Lactobacillus and/or interferon gamma could be investigated to prevent and treat anxiety and depression.” 

Findings Published

The UVA scientists have published their findings in the journal Brain Behavior and Immunity. The research team consisted of Merchak, Samuel Wachamo, Lucille C. Brown, Alisha Thakur, Brett Moreau, Ryan M. Brown, Courtney Rivet-Noor, Tula Raghavan and Gaultier. The researchers have no financial interest in the work.

The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, grants T32 NS115657, T32 GM008136, F31 AI174782, T32 GM007267 and T32 GM148379; the Owens Family Foundation; the Miller Family; the UVA TransUniversity Microbiome Initiative; and the UVA Presidential Fellowship in Neuroscience.

UVA’s TransUniversity Microbiome Initiative, or TUMI, serves as the central hub for the University’s cutting-edge microbiome research. The initiative aims to expand our understanding of the microbiome to better treat and prevent disease.

To keep up with the latest medical research news from UVA, subscribe to the Making of Medicine blog at http://makingofmedicine.virginia.edu.

Source: University of Virginia Health System