As a ‘biological being,’ I embrace science’s fight against disease

 

I am a biological being.

 

This phrase came to me about a decade ago, and I have been hoping to write about its meaning for a long time.

 

Now, with scientific research at key American institutions such as the National Institutes of Health and university labs under attack from the Trump administration, the phrase resonates with me stronger than ever.

 

From the time I was hospitalized in 1977 with two herniated discs after shoveling heavy snow through decades of participation in Huntington’s disease research studies, I have been acutely aware of my body as the object of biomedical observation.

 

Seeing scans of deteriorating HD brains at scientific conferences leaves me deeply worried about the shrinking of my own brain – the inevitable result of the fact that I carry the HD gene.

 

In March 2022 I observed preliminary data presented by Triplet Therapeutics from SHIELD-HD, a two-year research study of 70 presymptomatic and early-disease-stage carriers of the HD mutation. Triplet aimed to use SHIELD-HD to support plans for a groundbreaking clinical trial to attack a key driver of HD, somatic expansion, the mutant huntingtin gene’s tendency for continued expansion with age. The program was scuttled because the firm folded in October 2022 as it lacked investment funds.

 

The 2022 SHIELD-HD data showed deterioration in the brains of the gene carriers.

 

For the first time, I saw information about the impact of the HD gene on my own brain. I had volunteered for SHIELD-HD, undergoing MRI brain scans and cognitive tests and giving samples of blood and my cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) at the HD clinic at the University of California, San Diego.

 

Below are photos of me in the clinic in August 2022, just two months before the Triplet shutdown. The first shows a neurologist injecting an anesthetic to prepare for the drawing of my CSF. In the second photo the doctor draws a small amount of my CSF. It was the last of my several CSF drawings over the course of SHIELD-HD. Scientists see analysis of CSF, which bathes the brain, as a major tool in the search for therapies for HD. 

 

Having CSF drawn is a safe procedure but can be painful. Each time I drove home by myself within a couple hours of the drawing. I am very glad I did it.

 

 

 

 

Analysis of SHIELD-HD

 

With the end of Triplet, final analysis of the key SHIELD-HD data was completed by CHDI Foundation, Inc., the largest private funder of HD research. The analysis was presented at the 19th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference, sponsored by CHDI, in February 2024.

 

A future article will further explore my participation in SHIELD-HD and the importance of that program for HD research.

 

The 20th Therapeutics Conference: a sign of collaboration

 

As a biological being, I embrace science, not useless conspiracy theories. At the University of San Diego, where I teach and research, I began a new course this month called “A History of the Brain: Examining Huntington’s Disease.” One key lesson from the history of brain science: reliance on superstition was replaced with scientific observation – the key to solving neurodegenerative disorders like HD.

 

On a large scale, so has the HD community participated in and supported science – from the start of the hunt for the gene in the 1970s to programs today such as Enroll-HD. Tens of thousands of individuals from around the world have taken part, despite the fact that HD is a rare disease, with about 40,000 affected individuals in the U.S.

 

CHDI, the Huntington’s Disease Society of America, the Hereditary Disease Foundation, Help4HD International, and other HD organizations also rely on science and cooperate with scientific institutions.

 

A magnificent example of scientific collaboration will take place starting this evening in Palm Springs, CA, as the 20th HD Therapeutics Conference gets under way at the Parker hotel.

 

Stay tuned for reports about the meeting.

Savoring 20 years of my Huntington’s disease blog

 

This month I am celebrating the 20 years of this blog.

 

I began At Risk for Huntington’s Disease on January 10, 2005, wanting to “squeeze as much life into my days as possible” before experiencing the debilitating HD symptoms that led to my mother’s death a year later. Because I lived in what I called the “terrible and lonely HD closet” – fearful of genetic discrimination – I used the pseudonym “Gene Veritas,” “the truth in my genes.” That name reflected the fact that I had tested positive for the HD gene in 1999.

 

My mother died at 68, after two decades of debilitating symptoms, which was very painful to watch.

 

I turned 65 last month. By this age, I had expected to have full-blown HD, which would have left me unable to work, drive, or write.

 

But, according to my latest neurological checkup, I don’t yet have apparent HD symptoms!

 

In general, the more abnormal the gene, the earlier the age of disease onset. My mother and I have the same gene mutation, suggesting a similar disease path. However, although my mother’s symptoms started in her late 40s, one or more modifier genes, the functions of which were discovered a decade ago, have perhaps delayed my disease onset.

 

This article is number 336. Each day of good health is a blessing.

 

Gene Veritas (aka Kenneth P. Serbin) with his blog (photo by Regina Serbin)

 

The impact

 

In 2012, I exited the HD closet by publishing an essay – and using my real name, Kenneth P. Serbin – in The Chronicle of Higher Education. It was titled “Racing Against the Genetic Clock.” Going public opened new vistas of advocacy and enabled me to blog with greater transparency.

 

In December 2022. I published a detailed analysis of the blog in “Striving for a Realistic and Unapologetic View of Huntington’s Disease” in the Journal of Huntington’s Disease. It described how the blog has helped give voice to the HD community by exploring the major challenges faced by HD families, becoming a key reference for those families, and chronicling the quest to defeat the disorder.

 

As I observed, the blog has also “helped document the new and harrowing experience of living in the gray zone between a genetic test result and disease onset.”

 

At Risk for HD has addressed multiple topics including advocacy, caregiving, family trauma, coping strategies, genetic testing, discrimination, leaving the HD closet, participation in research and clinical trials, as well as religion, faith, and spirituality.

 

When my mother was diagnosed with HD in 1995 – two years after the discovery of the gene – little hope existed for treatments that could slow the progression of HD. However, in the past decade, advances in academic labs and biopharma firms have led to key clinical trials that show potential for affecting the course of HD and perhaps even a cure (click here to read more).

Telling the story of those complex developments has become a major focus of At Risk for HD. With the growing number of research projects, I have necessarily highlighted those that appear closest to producing actual drugs such as the Roche gene silencing program, which I have covered extensively.

 

In 2021, the first Roche trial showed lack of efficacy. In 2023 Roche started enrolling volunteers in a more focused trial to see if the drug might work at least in some patients. Other key trials are in progress or being planned.

 

Hoping for an HD-free world, savoring life

 

Writing the entries of At Risk for HD has given me great meaning and purpose, which researchers have identified as increasing well-being and positively impacting the course of the disease.

 

For now, I plan to continue blogging as long health permits – and until the quest for a cure is complete.

 

In February, I hope to attend the crucial 20th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference at the Parker Hotel in Palm Springs, CA. The conference is sponsored by CHDI Foundation, Inc., the largest private funder of HD research.

 

In 2011, I delivered the conference keynote speech before 250 scientists, physicians, and biopharma reps – a decisive step towards my complete exit from the closet in 2012 and chronicled in this blog.

 

I have described the conference as the “Super Bowl of HD research,” covered in many blog articles and videos of scientists (see, for example, this one).

 

With the rest of the HD community, I hope for the announcement of effective treatments. I very much look forward to reporting on progress.

 

Just as important is the need to savor life – another key lesson of my journey with the HD community, this blog, and my friends and family.

The search for Huntington's disease treatments is indeed ‘rocket science’ – and we can all help build the rocket

For people facing Huntington’s disease and other devastating, untreatable conditions, the powerful wish for a cure can conjure up the image of an elated scientist bursting from a laboratory and declaring “Eureka!”

However, it is unlikely a treatment for HD will emerge in this way.

We often misunderstand scientific progress, as explained in an essay in the May 16, 2015, edition of The New York Times by prominent physicist Leonard Mlodinow, Ph.D.

“Why do we reduce great discoveries to epiphany myths?” asked the sub-headline for Dr. Mlodinow’s online article, which was titled “It Is, in Fact, Rocket Science.”

“The mythical stories we tell about our heroes are always more romantic and often more palatable than the truth,” Dr. Mlodinow writes. “But in science, at least, they are destructive, in that they promote false conceptions of the evolution of scientific thought.”

From Isaac Newton to Charles Darwin to Stephen Hawking, we have oversimplified the process of discovery, Dr. Mlodinow explains. Rather than the eureka moments popularized in books and the media – like the apple falling on Newton’s head – these scientists’ discoveries involved years of hard work and questioning of assumptions, including their own.

Thus, Dr. Mlodinow reminds us that breakthroughs result from the cumulative build-up of many moments of discovery by scientists past and present.

He thus underscores a crucial point for the Huntington’s disease community: finding treatments will necessarily involve a collective effort by scientists and volunteers in research studies and clinical trials.

“Even if we are not scientists, every day we are challenged to make judgments and decisions about technical matters like vaccinations, financial investments, diet supplements and, of course, global warming,” Dr. Mlodinow points out. “The myths can seduce one into believing there is an easier path, one that doesn’t require such hard work.”

We in the HD community must all play our part in the quest for treatments.

A eureka moment deflated

As a carrier of the deadly HD mutation who watched his mother succumb to the disease, I have sometimes fallen prey to the seductive scenario described by Dr. Mlodinow, and even done so in this blog.

Four years ago this month, I was so excited about Alnylam Pharmaceuticals’ progress towards a remedy that I posted a picture of myself holding an Alnylam compound designed to attack HD at its genetic roots. I wrote that the compound, “the potential cure in my hand,” seemed magical.

I later made the image my Facebook profile photo.

(See the photo below and click here to read more.)

Gene Veritas holding the Alnylam compound in 2011 (photo by Dr. Matthias Kretschmer, Alnylam)

I had perhaps become overconfident about the Alnylam project.

In collaboration with its partners Medtronic and CHDI Foundation, Inc., the nonprofit virtual biotech focused on HD treatments, Alnylam was planning to apply in 2012 for permission to start a clinical trial.

In early 2012, however, Alnylam cut a third of its work force in order to reduce costs. In May of that year, less than a year after my 2011 visit, the company shifted its business strategy. It downgraded the HD project and fired the scientific director in charge

Alnylam chose instead to concentrate on less complex – and perhaps more profitable – projects to find drugs for other conditions. Alnylam passed on the responsibility for testing the compound in a human clinical trial to Medtronic.

To date, Medtronic has announced no plans for a human clinical trial of the Alnylam compound.

“Medtronic believes the siRNA [gene-silencing] drug-device program continues to represent an exciting opportunity to combine an innovative therapeutic strategy with state-of-the-art drug device delivery technology for Huntington’s disease,” Jack Lemmon, Ph.D., a Medtronic program manager, responded in an e-mail to my request for an update on the project. “Pre-clinical work has generated promising results; however the therapy research program has been paused since 2013 until partnerships can be established allowing us to sustain the research. At this time, it is premature to discuss timeframes, but we hope to continue work to find a treatment for this devastating neurodegenerative disease.”

Shots on goal

I am concerned that the project runs the risk of entering a not uncommon limbo, which one former director of the National Institutes of Health calls the “valley of death,” the increasingly difficult transition between laboratories and clinical trials.

Devising the Alnylam compound involved a significant investment of time, money, and expertise. In my extensive interviews with Alnylam scientists in 2011, and even in a conference call with some of those same researchers after the announcement of the 2012 cutback, they expressed enthusiasm about the promise of the compound.

The Alnylam compound may – or may not – ultimately play a role in the search for treatments.

Without the Alnylam compound, the HD community would have one less shot on goal in the critical gene-silencing field.

I am disappointed at the lack of action – much less progress – regarding the Alnylam compound.

Fortunately for the HD community, one of those shots is scheduled to take place this year: Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., and Roche will start a historic gene-silencing clinical trial using a different type of drug technology. Other companies and labs are also focusing on the development of gene-silencing approaches for HD.

The Alnylam project didn’t meet the expectations of many in the community. However, it has still provided valuable data from which other researchers can benefit. I am grateful for Alnylam’s contributions to the quest for treatments, and I’m crossing my fingers that Medtronic can resume the project.

I indeed recognize that the path to treatments is not easy. Nor is it straight.

One example of a potentially fortuitous outcome of the Alnylam decision: the dismissed HD project director, Dinah Sah, Ph.D., now works as the senior vice president of neuroscience for Voyager Therapeutics, one of the new companies exploring gene-silencing for HD.

Dinah Sah, Ph.D., of Voyager Therapeutics (photo by Gene Veritas)

A road paved with cooperation

Enthusiasm is essential, but it must be tempered with the recognition that scientists need time – and money – to test hypotheses.

It took some two decades to discover the huntingtin gene. At the time of this breakthrough in 1993, people in the HD community celebrated.

Rightfully so, hope for treatments increased significantly.

Since then, hundreds of researchers from around the globe have published thousands of scientific papers on HD. Along the way they have identified hundreds of potential HD drug targets (biological pathways).

From the 1970s until today, thousands of individuals from HD-affected families have participated in research studies and, more recently, a growing number of clinical trials.

While many of us are disappointed that successful treatments have not emerged, we must recognize that the enormous amount of scientific work regarding HD should contribute – perhaps in ways no one yet knows – to future progress.

The road to treatments is paved with cooperation, and with the recognition that multiple drugs may be needed to manage this complex genetic disorder. (Thus, scientists don’t say “cure” when referring to HD.)

Cooperation: the HD community out in force at an HDSA Team Hope Walk (photo by Gene Veritas)

Something larger than ourselves

Our society worships individual “heroes.”

However, in the fight to defeat HD, each participant contributes with his or her talents and resources: financial donations, scientific expertise, caregiving, and daily dedication to the cause.

In this long-term commitment, we strive for the well-being of those beyond ourselves: the children who have yet to develop symptoms, the future generations of HD families, and other disease communities such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and many conditions even rarer than HD like dentatorubral-pallidoluysian atrophy, known as DRPLA.

For now, I’ll keep my Facebook profile photo as a symbol of hope governed by caution.

Yes, defeating HD is rocket science. When, collectively, we have completed that rocket, we can all ride it together.

(Please remember during HD Awareness Month to donate generously to the Huntington’s Disease Society of America or the HD cause of your choice!)

‘None of us are free until we are all free’: science and solidarity at the 10th Annual Huntington’s Disease Therapeutics Conference

Riding the emotion of a keynote speech by a young scientist at risk for Huntington’s disease, and seeking treatments with the immense help of a non-profit foundation, the participants at a historic research conference this week witnessed the fusion of science and human solidarity ultimately necessary for defeating HD.

On the evening of February 23, I and the approximately 300 attendees at the 10th Annual HD Therapeutics Conference, sponsored by the CHDI Foundation, Inc., listened as Jeff Carroll, Ph.D., recounted his mother’s demise from HD, his positive test for the HD genetic mutation, and his decision to pursue a career in science to save himself and others from HD.

“He’s an interesting combination of things in terms of being an advocate in the community, in terms of being someone from an HD family, in terms of being a top-flight researcher in the HD community, in terms of being a great communicator – he and his partner Ed Wild – in establishing HDBuzz, which is just a tremendously useful model of how to communicate results out to the rest of the community,” Robert Pacifici, Ph.D., CHDI’s chief scientific officer, said in introducing Dr. Carroll at the conference in Palm Springs, CA.

As an HD researcher-advocate who has attended all ten therapeutics conferences since 2006, Dr. Carroll offered a uniquely qualified, candid assessment of the progress towards treatments and CHDI’s role in the process.

“Every year, I come home revitalized and energized by the site of so many smart people working so hard on this problem,” Dr. Carroll, 37, told the audience in the main ballroom at the Parker Palm Springs hotel. He expressed his profound gratitude to CHDI, which has funded his and numerous other scientists’ research.

Painful progress toward success

However, success depends on the “efficient and timely completion of well-designed Phase III trials with HD drugs,” Dr. Carroll continued.

“A few weeks ago I attended a meeting at the Princeton CHDI office that included attendees from major pharmaceutical companies currently running HD clinical trials,” he said. “They are deeply concerned about something that would never have occurred to me to worry about, which is poor recruitment for trials of Huntington’s disease drugs.

“On reflection, it makes sense that the HD community may be wary of the way we have been speaking to them. Participating in the first clinical trial of a new molecule might be exciting, but participants of the third could be excused for having some questions.”

Trial administrators put participants through a daunting number of tests, he observed, which may discourage people from participating in more than one trial. Because trials are extremely expensive, sponsors often try to maximize the findings in Phase II, but not enough trials are reaching Phase III, he added.

“It must be said the scale of what is possible here must be unique in human history,” Dr. Carroll said of the efforts by CHDI, which has put more than $700 million towards treatments. “Resources on the scale being deployed by CHDI have been spent on common diseases, but never before have they been spent on such a focused attempt to ameliorate a rare disease.”

The HD community will achieve “something never done before” or “fail majestically,” he quipped with irony.

He added: “We might actually be watching the painful progress toward success.”

You can watch Dr. Carroll’s speech in the video below.

None of Us Are Free Until We Are All Free: A Keynote Speech on Huntington's Disease by Dr. Jeff Carroll from Gene Veritas on Vimeo.

Our brothers and sisters

After Dr. Carroll and his wife Meghan had HD-free twins, thanks to preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), he believed that “HD is done killing people in my family until I am gone,” he recalled.

However, recently two at-risk babies were born in his extended family.

“For a brief window, my family was the last that had to face this awful threat,” Dr. Carroll said. “But the arrival of these children has reminded me that none of us are free until we are all free.”

We must “raise up those of our brothers and sisters still suffering,” he concluded.

Like me, Dr. Carroll is racing against the genetic clock.

Crying for our community

This conference, my fifth, has proved especially poignant for me personally – even more so than the 2011 meeting, which I keynoted. In terms of the quest for HD treatments, it has been a landmark event. (My next article will provide an overview of the conference’s scientific aspects.)

I was both deeply saddened and heartened by Dr. Carroll’s story. I relived my own mother’s death from HD in 2006, my positive test for the gene in 1999, and my daughter’s negative test for HD in the womb (PGD was unavailable) in 2000.

It was one of the best speeches I have heard in two decades of observing the HD movement. Dr. Carroll tempered his enthusiasm and compassion for the HD community with hard-nosed, no-nonsense scientific analysis.

For the evening of February 25, the conference organizers arranged for a surprise outdoor screening of the 28-minute documentary The Lion’s Mouth Opens, about actress, director, and producer Marianna Palka’s positive test for HD. The film made the 2015 Academy Awards shortlist for Best Documentary Short.

As part of the surprise, Marianna, whom I had met earlier in the day, took questions from the audience. She appeared at the edge of the crowd, next to me, just as the film was ending.

Gene Veritas (left, aka Kenneth P. Serbin), Marianna Palka, and Louise Vetter, CEO of the Huntington's Disease Society of America (photo by Jerry Turner, CHDI)

It was a highly emotional experience for me. Filled with anger, frustration, and overwhelming sadness that a young person like Marianna should have to face HD, and once again reliving the trauma of my own HD test and the excruciating experience of testing our daughter, I hugged Marianna and cried uncontrollably for several minutes as she held and consoled me.

It’s so unjust that people have to face HD, I thought to myself.

I hardly ever let myself think that, trying to be strong, but at that moment I allowed myself to do so, and also to let loose all of the powerful emotions of the conference.

I told Marianna I was so sorry for her.

Marianna, who is just 33, was strong, telling me that we would all work together against HD.

After the film finished, Marianna talked with the audience about her experience of genetic testing, her strategies for staying healthy, and her work in film. She observed that The Lion’s Mouth Opens makes men cry.

You can watch Marianna’s exchange with the audience in the video below.

'The Lion's Mouth Opens' and Marianna Palka on Huntington's disease from Gene Veritas on Vimeo.

Enrolling families in the fight

At the start of the conference, I had lunched with Joe Giuliano, the CHDI director of clinical operations in Princeton, N.J., HD advocate Jimmy Pollard, and Chris Brown, a scientist from Evotec, a drug discovery company headquartered in Germany.

We pondered the same critical issue raised by Dr. Carroll, and that brave advocates like Marianna impel us to consider: how to inspire more families in the HD community to become involved in research studies and clinical trials.

I recalled my own speeches and blog articles about the terrible barriers to greater involvement: ignorance, fear, denial, stigma, and family tensions.

Giuliano is also the chief CHDI administrator for the Enroll-HD program, a global platform, research project, and HD patient and family registry aimed at facilitating clinical trials and the discovery of treatments. As Giulano and others have noted, it is not scientists who cure diseases, but the patients who participate in clinical trials.

That observation provides a fitting coda to Dr. Carroll’s speech.

And it underscores the absolute necessity to fuse science and solidarity in the fight against not just HD, but all diseases.

For an update on Enroll-HD, watch my interview with Giuliano below.

An Update on Enroll-HD from Gene Veritas on Vimeo.

A personal landmark, and gratitude

With this article I have completed my own HD milestone: it is the 200th post in this blog.

I am grateful to so many: God, my wife and daughter, my HD-victimized mother Carol Serbin, my HD-warrior father Paul Serbin, who died with a broken heart in 2009, CHDI, and the entire HD community.

Although I worry that my overly emotional response to the conference could signal the mood swings characteristic of early HD onset, I am also grateful that I remain, according to my last neurological checkup, asymptomatic.

As I prepared to depart the conference, I pondered how the HD movement can reinforce human solidarity and our bond with the researchers.