The team leader at the Laboratory for Proteolytic Neuroscience at Riken¡¯s Brain Science Institute is not a man usually given to making apocalyptic statements.
Yet when I asked him whether Japan should be investing more money in Alzheimer¡¯s research, he responded with more than the usual academic plea for more money. ¡°Alzheimer¡¯s disease,¡± said Takaomi Saido, ¡°will destroy Japan¡¯s social-welfare mechanisms in the near future.¡±
Saido, based in Wako, Saitama, is on a twin social and scientific mission: to protect Japanese society from the ravages of Alzheimer¡¯s disease, and to uncover the secrets of how the brain ages.
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