Breaking Alzheimer's

Breaking Alzheimer’s: A 15 Year Crusade to Expose the Cause and Deliver the Cure, written by Dayan Goodenowe, PhD, founder of Dr. Goodenowe Dietary Therapeutics, presents his work on the biochemical mechanisms underlying Alzheimer’s disease and their translational potential. The book provides the conceptual foundation for our plasmalogen‑focused therapeutic program and the decision to pursue a regulated drug‑development pathway.
 
The contemporary pharmaceutical system is highly effective at developing patent‑protected therapies for defined disease indications. Public research institutions generate foundational science and, increasingly, participate in commercialization pathways tied to intellectual property. Within that architecture, innovation is organized around exclusivity, regulatory approval, and defined reimbursement models.
 
Preventive, metabolic, or supplement‑based strategies do not naturally align with this structure. They are rarely advanced as regulated drug candidates and are seldom treated as public health infrastructure. Even when grounded in serious biochemical research, they often lack a durable institutional pathway. Without clearly defined patient populations, standardized protocols, reproducible outcome data, controlled manufacturing, and economic viability, they remain scientifically interesting but structurally marginal.
 
Breaking Alzheimer’s argues that this is not a failure of science but a consequence of design.
 
If a mechanism‑based intervention is to influence the trajectory of a disease, it cannot rely on biological plausibility alone. It must be engineered to withstand scrutiny within the systems that govern therapeutic adoption. Where the necessary tools and pathways do not exist, they must be created.
 
Dr. Goodenowe Dietary Therapeutics was formed to translate that position into execution by advancing a precisely defined lipid‑modulating agent through a regulated clinical development pathway. The objective is not to operate outside the system, but to meet its standards directly.

Breaking Alzheimer’s and the basis for our therapeutics program

Breaking Alzheimer’s: A 15 Year Crusade to Expose the Cause and Deliver the Cure summarizes Dr. Dayan Goodenowe’s research on the biochemical mechanisms of neurological disease, with a focus on plasmalogen deficiency in Alzheimer’s disease. The book describes how structure‑specific reductions in ethanolamine plasmalogens are observed in Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative conditions and proposes that targeted restoration of these lipids may be a viable therapeutic strategy.

Over approximately 15 years of work, Dr. Goodenowe and collaborators have evaluated associations among plasmalogen levels, cognitive status, and aging, and have developed synthetic plasmalogen precursors that can be administered orally. In an open‑label, dose‑escalation study of a DHA‑plasmalogen precursor (DHA‑alkylacylglycerol, DHA‑AAG) in cognitively impaired individuals, oral administration increased specific DHA‑plasmalogen species in blood in a dose‑dependent, structure‑selective manner and was associated with statistically significant improvements in group‑level cognitive and mobility scores.

These findings, together with broader epidemiologic and mechanistic data on plasmalogens in Alzheimer’s disease, support the concept that plasmalogen modulation is a pharmacologically tractable target rather than solely a nutritional parameter. Breaking Alzheimer’s translates this body of work into a coherent framework linking a defined biochemical deficit (plasmalogen depletion) to measurable biomarkers and to a specific class of synthetic precursors that can modify those biomarkers in humans.

Our new therapeutics company is being established to advance this framework within a formal drug‑development pathway. The company’s purpose is to develop a precisely characterized plasmalogen‑modulating agent, derived from the ProdromeNeuro concept, as an investigational drug candidate for Alzheimer’s disease and related indications, in accordance with applicable regulatory standards and through rigorously designed clinical trials. While current commercial formulations of omega‑3 plasmalogen precursors are marketed as dietary supplements, the book and the underlying research program point to a need for standardized composition, defined dosing, controlled studies, and regulatory review consistent with pharmaceutical development.

In this context, Breaking Alzheimer’s serves as a scientific and historical overview of the plasmalogen hypothesis and early translational work, whereas the therapeutics company is focused on the next stage: optimization of a drug‑grade plasmalogen precursor, systematic evaluation of safety, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, and efficacy, and, if supported by evidence, submission to regulatory authorities for potential approval as a treatment for Alzheimer’s disease.