Advances in understanding Alzheimer's disease, and the contributions of current Alzheimer research: ten years on and beyond

The initial issue of Current Alzheimer Research (CAR) was first published in 2004, a year marked by the glories of the Athens Summer Olympics as well as the destruction of the Asian Tsunami[1]. Over the last decade, scientific knowledgehas moved rapidly forward across numerous disciplines,marked by the discovery of the potential for water and life on Mars [2,3], the generation of the first induced pluripotent stem cells [4], the creation of the first cell controlled by a synthetic genome [5], and genome editing [6].In the realm of dementia -now, beyond the centennial of the first presentation by Alois Alzheimer on the disease that bears his name [7]–important changes too have occurred in the past decade. Whereas the exact prevalence of dementia remains unknown, it is crystal clear that dementia is a common, devastating and costly condition amongst the elderly. The WHO 2012 Report “Dementia: a public health priority” [8] estimatesthat 35.6 million people suffered with dementia worldwide in 2010. An estimated incidence that is much higher than that approximatedin 2004 (18 million people [9]),and this value has undoubtedly grown still more in 2014.