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Alzheimer's revelation #2  http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 095201.htm 

Scientists at the University of Liverpool have created a new chemical compound that could be developed into a drug treatment for Alzheimer's disease.

The research team has used a family of long chain sugars called Heparan Sulphates (HS), found on nearly every cell of the body, to produce a new compound that can prevent the formation of clumps of small proteins that form in the brain. These clumps or 'plaques' disrupt the normal function of cells leading to progressive memory loss which is characteristic of Alzheimer's disease......


A spin-out company, IntelliHep Ltd, has also been founded to explore the commercial opportunities of developing engineering heparans as new drugs against Alzheimer's and other important medical conditions.

Early detection of Alzheimer's is finally here, probably http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/12/ … S._2252534

Accuracy of tests for Alzheimer's  now up to 90 %

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/healt … blood.html

Scientists reported progress today toward one of medicine’s long-sought goals: the development of a blood test that can accurately diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, and even do so years before truly debilitating memory loss.

A team of scientists, based mainly at Stanford University, developed a test that was about 90 percent accurate in distinguishing the blood of people with Alzheimer’s from the blood of those without the disease. The test was about 80 percent accurate in predicting which patients with mild memory loss would go on to develop Alzheimer’s disease two to six years later.

Outside experts called the results, published online today by Nature Medicine promising but very preliminary. They cautioned that the work must be validated by others and in much larger studies, because there have been many disappointments in the past.

I don't believe that the Stanford group above is working with the Stanford Folding group, but who knows. 

http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/31838   

biophysicists in the US have discovered that a protein called myoglobin can coordinate the motion of surrounding water molecules, slowing them down significantly – perhaps to allow certain interactions to occur (PNAS 104 18461). The team has also shown that the motion of these water molecules can be associated with the shape and function of the protein – information that could improve computer simulations of protein dynamics and lead to a better understanding of diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, which involve drastic protein shape changes.


.......

Over the past few years Dongping Zhong and colleagues at the Ohio State University have developed a way to study protein hydration using ultrashort pulses of laser light. Their technique involves the amino acid tryptophan, which occurs naturally in proteins. When tryptophan is excited by a laser pulse, it emits light with properties that depend on how the tryptophan is interacting with nearby water molecules.

The team prepared proteins called myoglobins (proteins that carry oxygen in muscles) with tryptophans at known locations along the protein strands. The team then fired 90 fs (9*10-14 s) pulses of ultraviolet light at the proteins. By observing the light emitted from the tryptophans, they discovered that water next to the proteins moves in two very distinct ways.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 … 080452.htm 

Researchers at the University of Warwick and the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur have discovered that the mechanism that we rely on to transport iron safely through our blood stream can, in certain circumstances, collapse into a state which grows long worm-like "fibrils" banded by lines of iron rust. This process could provide the first insight into how iron gets deposited in the brain to cause some forms of Parkinson's & Alzheimer's and Huntington's diseases.

http://foldingforum.org/viewtopic.php?f … 854#p58410

Folding Project leader Vijay Pande says in 6-12 months that theoretical advances in understanding Alzheimer's and Huntington's Disease from Folding will be made public.

http://fah-web.stanford.edu/psummary.html

The molecules that are being folded vary in size.   The small ones can be from 140 to 600 atoms.

I just noticed some really big ones at 300,000 atoms.