The Huntington’s disease community can’t afford to lose momentum

The Huntington’s disease community can’t afford to lose momentum in the quest for treatments for this incurable disorder.

As I noted in my last article, fatigue can set in for advocates and family members. This is understandable, given the tiring demands of caregiving, the frequent feelings of hopelessness in the face of the “devil of all diseases,” and the immense challenge faced by scientists – and the population needed to participate in drug trials – in devising revolutionary drugs that reach the brain and prevent its cells from dying.

Interrupting my own momentum in writing a book in my field as a Brazil specialist, I summoned the strength to once again focus on HD. I traveled coast-to-coast twice in a little more than 72 hours to give a speech about a crucial upcoming HD clinical trial and to interview a prominent scientist engaged in the search for treatments. It was an intense time.

My trip on April 10 began inauspiciously, as a late departure from San Diego caused us to approach Atlanta as thunderstorms struck, leading the flight to detour to Birmingham, AL. Arriving in Atlanta close to midnight, I had missed my connection to Providence. After finally finding a hotel 20 miles from the airport, I could only sleep four hours. The morning flight to Providence also left late, because of tardy pilots.

Travelers do face such stresses, especially as service in the airline industry declines, but as a carrier of the HD gene mutation concerned about disease onset, I especially need to avoid them.

As it became clear that I would miss my 9 a.m. keynote talk on April 11 in Norwich, CT, Laura Kokoska, an advocate for the Connecticut affiliate of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA-CT) whose mother has HD, helped me via cell phone calls and texts to calmly consider alternatives. She and another advocate, Val Kim, whisked me from Providence to Norwich, serving me lunch in the car. We arrived in time for me to speak in the last slot of the day.

The audience of some 30 was anxious to hear me provide an HD family member’s perspective on one of the most significant steps towards treatments since the discovery of the huntingtin gene in 1993: the Roche/Isis gene-silencing trial, set to start this year at several sites in Canada, England, and Germany.

HDSA-CT education event participants (from left to right): James McGann, Debbie Pausig, Gene Veritas (aka Kenneth Serbin), Laura Kokoska, Holly Broadbent, and Sue McGann

A historic attack on the genetic roots

I first explained how my mother’s demise from HD and my positive test for the genetic mutation in 1999 led me to delve into the science of Huntington’s disease. Then I described how since early 2008 I have tracked the program by Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., to stop HD at its genetic roots. In 2013 Isis partnered with the pharmaceutical giant Roche to prepare for a gene-silencing clinical trial in HD.

“This trial is a historic trial,” I said. “It’s a big moment in the history of our community, and also in the history of science.”

Isis and Roche aim to test a drug known as an antisense oligonucleotide (ASO). “That’s a fancy term for basically saying it’s an artificial piece of DNA,” I continued. “That is [a] ‘laser-guided missile’ that is supposed to go into the brain cells, and it will block the production of the huntingtin RNA and the protein.[…] The protein is what is causing the problems in the cell. They’re also thinking now that the RNA is also causing problems within the cell, that they want to cut down the amount of the RNA, too.

“This clinical trial […] is the first time that someone is going after the genetic roots of the disease,” I stressed. “That is an immense motive for hope in our community.” And that’s why I’m so excited about the project and follow it so closely.

Being realistic

I showed PowerPoint slides of photos of the Isis facility and the company’s scientists, including Frank Bennett, Ph.D., the senior vice president for research and the head of the HD project. I also noted the important support for the project from CHDI Foundation, Inc., and the lab of Donald Cleveland, Ph.D., at the University of California, San Diego.

I reminded the audience that enthusiasm must be coupled with patience: the HD community must recognize the time it takes to develop drugs and also brace itself for failures in the quest for treatments. This year Isis and Roche are initiating Phase I of the trial, aiming only to test the safety and tolerability of the ASO.

Potential Phases II and III would examine the drug’s efficacy. In all, it could take five years or more to complete all three phases.

“We have to be realistic,” I said. “Ninety percent of drugs that go into clinical trials do not make it to market.[…] It takes a lot of shots on goal before you finally get a goal.[…] We have to keep in mind that it’s a slow, painstaking, and deliberate process.”

You can watch my speech in the video below.

Hope for Huntington’s Disease Families: The Isis/Roche Gene-Silencing Clinical Trial from Gene Veritas on Vimeo.

Returning to Yale

After the event I rode to New Haven with Debbie Pausig, a marriage and family therapist, grief counselor, and HDSA-CT support group leader. Debbie recently published An AffaiR Worth Remembering With Huntington’s Disease: Incurable Love & Intimacy During an Incurable Illness, a memoir of her relationship with her late, HD-stricken husband. Debbie capitalized the “r” in “affair” – and it’s reversed on the cover of the actual book – to emphasize the many unusual twists in her story.

Later I visited the campus of Yale University, my alma mater, and ate pizza at an old haunt. It was only the fourth time I’ve returned to Yale since graduating with a B.A. in history in 1982. In 2012 I visited Yale to interview a number of scientists working on HD (click here to read more), including the preparation of clinical trials.

“Felt like an undergrad again walking through freezing campus,” I texted an old classmate while watching the students and remembering the exhilarating possibilities of youth.

In my hotel room, mixing in baking soda and Epsom salt from a care package put together by Laura, I relaxed in a hot bath. As Laura put it, the bath would help my body recover from the traumatic plane trip.

Gene Veritas (aka Kenneth Serbin) outside Wall Street Pizza (formerly Naples) in New Haven

A science tour and lunch with old friends

The next morning I took a tour of Yale’s Magnetic Resonance Research Center with its long-time director, Doug Rothman, who received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1987. A professor of diagnostic radiology and biomedical engineering at the Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Rothman is one of the world’s leading pioneers in research in MRI, magnetic resonance spectroscopy, and quantitative neuroscience with magnetic resonance.

A future article will detail my interview with Dr. Rothman about his research into key questions about the mitochondria, the powerhouses of our cells, and their role in HD.

I lunched with classmate Paul Bass and his wife Carole (Yale 1983), two former colleagues on the Yale Daily News and accomplished journalists in New Haven. The Basses have long served as confidantes.  

Paul’s innovative online community newspaper, the New Haven Independent, was one of the first sites to link to this blog, and Carole blogged for the Yale Alumni Magazine about my definitive exit from the HD closet in 2012.

I welled with emotion at seeing my old friends, hearing good news about their lives and young adult daughters, and sharing my joy at having remained asymptomatic beyond my mother’s age of onset.

Paul and Carole Bass (photo by Gene Veritas)

Supporters of the HD cause

That evening in New York I dined with another Yale friend, Norman Oder (class of 1983), and his girlfriend Maryanne. A journalist, editor, and founder of the watchdog blog Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report, Norman urged me to start this blog and has edited virtually every piece since its inception ten years ago.

During my 24 hours in New York, Norman and I had several deep conversations about my future health, the destiny of this blog, and numerous aspects of the HD movement. He is my “HD alter ego.”

On April 13, I had lunch with yet another classmate, Adam Glick, a businessman and philanthropist who has generously supported the HD cause. Adam’s real estate company owns the Parker Palm Springs, the hotel in Palm Springs, CA, that expertly hosts the annual, CHDI-sponsored HD Therapeutics Conference when it takes place in the U.S.

I gave Adam a rundown of the 2015 conference, which I attended. We also discussed the “nocebo effect,” the idea that the expectation of illness can bring on symptoms even though a person is not ill.

I told Adam that last year two major supplements – coenzyme Q10 and creatine – thought to have potential for treating HD were proven ineffective. I speculated that my belief in these supplements’ efficacy might have contributed to my lack of symptoms.

Quiet resolve

At Maryanne’s suggestion, I visited the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) to view the special exhibition of Jacob Lawrence’s series of paintings about the great migration of African-Americans from the rural South to the urban North in the mid-20th century.

This significant event in our nation’s history is forgotten by many. As a professional historian, I was both intrigued and moved by the tempera paintings depicting the hardships of African-Americans in the South and the brave decision by millions to uproot themselves to find a better life.

My teenage daughter, a first-year high school student, had asked me to take photos of murals in New York. I didn’t have time to search for murals, but Lawrence’s paintings are mural-like and tell a vast story. I will soon show them to her.

Visiting MOMA gave me a break from the HD-laden aspects of my trip. Yet I could not help but draw a parallel between the quiet resolve of the migrants and the yearning of the HD community for liberation from the yoke of Huntington’s disease.

Through such resolve we can maintain the momentum necessary for defeating HD.

The African-American South-North migration of the mid-20th century as depicted in one of the paintings of Jacob Lawrence (photo by Gene Veritas)

(I wish to thank the individuals and organizations that organized the conference and sponsored my trip: Sue McGann, HDSA-CT, and the Wireless Zone Foundation.)

(Disclosure: I hold a symbolic amount of Isis Pharmaceuticals stock.)