DENVER — It’s about as bad of a disease as you can imagine. There is no treatment, no protection, no prevention and certainly no cure.

For many patients and their families there is no hope, either. “There is a great deal of life to be lived for somebody with Alzheimer’s, they should not fail to keep up,” says Dr. Huntington Potter, PhD, Director of the Rocky Mountain Alzheimer’s Disease Center at CU Anschutz.

Professor Potter is certainly not giving up hope. He founded the Rocky Mountain Alzheimer’s Disease Center in 2012. They’re conducting research into treating Alzheimer’s. “Preliminary results are very very encouraging,” he said.

Dr. Potter is talking about a drug the center is studying right now. It’s called Leukine.  Leukine  reverses Alzheimer’s in lab mice.  It’s already FDA approved and has been used to treat diseases like leukemia. Professor Potter says it seems to be safe in the short term trial that they’ve had for humans so far.

The preliminary results are encouraging to Professor Potter and his team, however, he is quick to caution there is a lot of research that is still  ahead. “We have a lot more work to do before we can call it a breakthrough. We have to treat people longer. Our current trial is only three weeks long.”

What about the 5.7 million people in the United States who already has Alzheimer’s?  “We have more work to do,”  he said.