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Background and Objective: Alzheimer’s disease is nowadays the most common cause of dementia. It is a degenerative neurological pathology affecting the brain, progressively leading the patient to a state of total dependence, thus creating a very complex and difficult situation for the family that has to assist him/her. Early diagnosis is a primary objective and constitutes the hope of being able to intervene in the development phase of the disease. Methods: In this paper, a method to automatically detect the presence of Alzheimer’s disease, by exploiting deep learning, is proposed. Five different convolutional neural networks are considered: ALEX_NET, VGG16, FAB_CONVNET, STANDARD_CNN and FCNN. The first two networks are state-of-the-art models, while the last three are designed by authors. We classify brain images into one of the following classes: non-demented, very mild demented and mild demented. Moreover, we highlight on the image the areas symptomatic of Alzheimer presence, thus providing a visual explanation behind the model diagnosis. Results: The experimental analysis, conducted on more than 6000 magnetic resonance images, demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed neural networks in the comparison with the state-of-the-art models in Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis and localization. The best results in terms of metrics are the best with STANDARD_CNN and FCNN with accuracy, precision and recall between 98% and 95%. Excellent results also from a qualitative point of view are obtained with the Grad-CAM for localization and visual explainability. Conclusions: The analysis of the heatmaps produced by the Grad-CAM algorithm shows that in almost all cases the heatmaps highlight regions such as ventricles and cerebral cortex. Future work will focus on the realization of a network capable of analyzing the three anatomical views simultaneously.

Australia — ASIC Sues Citrofresh.

Australia — IDT's Blackman, Mattick Awarded "Science Oscars".

Australia — Medical Fellowship in Honor of Zhou.

Australia — Stem Cell Sciences Joins European Program.

China — Johnson & Johnson Breaks Ground for the Biggest Base in Asia.

China — Beijing Sinovac Biotech Seeks Volunteers for 2nd Bird Flu Vaccine Trial.

China — CAS Establishes Five More Research Institutes.

China — China to Increase Support for Drug Research and Production.

China — Chinese Government Reduces Drug Price.

Hong Kong — Shaw Prize for Six Scientists.

India — India Ayurvedic Medicine Gives Hope to Alzheimer.

India — Indian Drug Maker Buys DHA.

Japan — Takeda's Actos Reduces Risk of Second Stroke.

Malaysia — KL's New Initiatives for its Biotech Industry.

Singapore — Professor Philip Ingham to Boost Singapore's Biomedical Drive.

Singapore — Health Agreements Between Singapore and Chinese Companies.

Singapore — Biosensors Confident of Approval for its Stent.

Singapore — More Drug Companies Conducting Trials in Singapore.

Singapore — New Breed of Doctors to be Trained at Duke-NUS Medical School.

Taiwan — Taiwan Hosts International Biologics and Vaccine Conference.

Taiwan — Taiwan and Vietnam Sign Agreement to Fight Disease.

Taiwan — Taiwan to Invest NT$300 million for Biofuel Research Efforts.

Taiwan — Taiwan's Medical Sensor Breakthrough.

Taiwan — HIV Vaccine Trials in Taiwan.

Others — Vietnam Prepares for Potential Bird Flu Outbreaks Among Humans.

Others — AIDS Meeting Urged to Rethink Prevention Strategy.

Others — WHO Warns About Drug-Resistant TB.

ADDF Supports Axxam to Develop Therapeutics for Alzheimer's.

Epitomics Signs Agreement with Bayer for Antibody Technology.

Sirnaomics Partners Guangdong Zhongsheng to Dvelop siRNA Therapeutics.

Jubilant, Endo Achieve Late Stage Discovery Milestone.

Merck and Hanwha Chemical Corporation Establish Global Strategic Collaboration for Biosimilar.

SIOGEN Awarded 'Most Innovative Biotech in Asia'.

GENEWIZ, Inc. and Biomatters Announce Strategic Partnership to Align DNA-Based Services and Analysis Software.

Invida Launches Atopiclair^TM, a Treatment for Atopic Dermatitis Symptoms.

Accenture Implements Nationwide Electronic Health Record System in Singapore.

A*STAR & Olympus Singapore Establish Microscopy Suite to Study Human Diseases at the Nano-level.

Natural Products in the Drug Discovery Programmes in Alzheimer's: Impacts and Prospects.

Advancement of chitosan based nanoparticles for present and future interests.

Algal Tranformations for Enhanced Metabolite Production and Pathway Manipulation.

AtCor Signs US$0.9 Million Pharmaceutical Contract.

Corning Opens Life Sciences Manufacturing and Distribution Facility in China.

Roche NimbleGen and BGI Develop Advanced MHC Region Capture Technology.

GVK Biosciences Partners with PROOF Centre of Excellence.

Stemade Biotech Unveils Dental Stem Cell Banking in Chandigarh.

Israeli Firm to Hold Schizophrenia Clinical Trial in India.

Quintiles and Prodia Partner to Provide Central Lab Testing Solution in Indonesia.

Medtronic Begins Transcatheter Aortic Valve Trial in Japan.

Intellect Neurosciences Obtains Two New Patents in Japan for Alzheimer's Immunotherapy Programs.

ASLAN Pharmaceuticals and Bristol-Myers Squibb Enter Innovative Oncology Partnership.

The misfolding and aggregation of amyloid-$\beta$ (A$\beta )$ peptides into amyloid fibrils is regarded as one of the possible causes of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Aromatic interactions (i.e. $\pi$–$\pi$ interactions) between tanshinone drugs extracted from Chinese herb Salvia Miltiorrhiza (SM) and aromatic residues of A$\beta$ peptides have been shown to prevent further growth of amyloid aggregates. In this work, the effects of isomerization, complexation and polarity of environment on the strength of $\pi$–$\pi$ stacking interactions of tanshinone I (TS1) and isotanshinone I (IS1), as the two diterpenoid quinones in the SM herb, and their complexes with Mg${}^{2+}$ cation, IS1-Mg${}^{2+}$ and TS1-Mg${}^{2+}$, with phenylalanine (PHE), as an aromatic amino acid in A$\beta$ structure have been investigated using the quantum mechanical calculations in the gas-phase, ether, acetone, DMSO, and water solvent. Molecular electrostatic potential (MEP), which are used to predict the nucleophile active sites, electron densities calculated at the bond critical points (${\rho }_{\mathrm{\text{BCP}}})$ and ring critical points (${\rho }_{\mathrm{\text{RCP}}})$ by the atoms in molecules (AIM) method and the donor–acceptor interaction energies ($E^2)$ calculated using the natural bond orbital (NBO) method were used to investigate the interplay between $\pi$–$\pi$ stacking and complexation. The results show that the IS1/TS1-Mg${}^{2+}$ compounds have a more protective role compared to TS1/IS1-Mg${}^{2+}$ compounds due to the stronger interaction with PHE of A$\beta$ in antiaggregation for further development of A$\beta$ inhibitors to prevent and disaggregate amyloid formation. Complexation with Mg${}^{2+}$ increases the interaction diterpenoid drugs with PHE and makes notable changes in structural and electronic properties of diterpenoids. Also, the interactions between diterpenoid and PHE in less polar environment are more than other environments. Low-polarity environments have the best mimics of the A$\beta$ binding site.

Readhead et al. recently reported in Neuron the detection and association of human herpesviruses 6A (HHV6A) and 7 (HHV7) with Alzheimer’s disease by shotgun sequencing. I was skeptical of the specificity of their modified Viromescan bioinformatics method and subsequent analysis for numerous reasons. Using their supplementary data, the prevalence of variola virus, the etiological agent of the eradicated disease smallpox, can be calculated at 97.5% of their Mount Sinai Brain Bank dataset. Reanalysis of Readhead et al.’s data using highly sensitive and specific alternative methods finds no HHV7 reads in their samples; HHV6A reads were found in only 2 out of their top 15 samples sorted by reported HHV6A abundance. Finally, recreation of Readhead et al.’s modified Viromescan method identifies reasons for its low specificity.