CAB Beta
The goal of CAB Beta is to come up with better tests to measure thinking, concentration, and memory, that would be so accurate that we could monitor the effects of a new drug very quickly.
Just think how many more drugs could be tested if it only took 3 months of taking the medication and being retested, instead of 5 years! That would be twenty times more medications in five years, or, a drug could be tested twenty times faster. Either way it means finding a good treatment for HD much, much sooner. This type of study is very simple, and only requires a few visits and a few hours of time. By participating in observational studies, such as CAB, patients and families can help speed up the process of drug discovery in HD, a worthwhile goal for everyone involved.
It takes time to develop new drugs. Part of that time involves the discovery of the drug, a process over which patients and families have little control. However, another significant part of that time involves the development of a good way to test it in patients. Right now, two of the studies we are conducting in Huntington’s disease, one looking at creatine and one looking at co-enzyme Q10 in HD involve observing patients on treatment from 3-5 years. Everybody—patients, families, physicians, and researchers think this is way too long. To speed this up, we need better, more sensitive tests to evaluate HD.
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