project-about-ad-disease-claim-and-evidence

Directions

This is a group project, meaning that each member of the group should contribute information, ideas, and

writing. You will be presenting an argument making the case for a particular direction that should be taken

in the AD therapy development. For example: should we focus on developing antibodies or small molecule

drugs against A



oligomers? Or perhaps we should target the hyper-phosphorylation of tau? Or tau

aggregation? Or perhaps the prion-like properties of tau? Or maybe we should try to identify an infectious

agent that triggers Alzheimer’s disease (a more recent, uncertain development in the filed of AD)? It is up

to the group to decide. Before you make your choice, do your homework: read the articles posted on

Canvas (and any other articles from reliable sources). Feel free to “divide and conquer”: assign each

member of your group one possible direction and have each member make a pitch on the direction they

investigated. Discuss and decide on the direction you think is best to follow (there is probably no “wrong”

choice). Your argument should be well-supported by evidence and contain ideas of further investigations.

Your argument should contain the following parts (up to 5 pages, double-spaced):

1. Your claim: what should be the focus of the AD treatments in the future?

2. What is the evidence that supports this claim? There should also be a clear explanation of why this

evidence supports your claim. Cite your sources (see papers that we read in class for examples of in-text

citation of sources)

3. Counter-argument: briefly, what are the arguments against your ideas? What other directions are

possible?

4. Rebuttal: why, nevertheless, you think that your direction is the most promising/productive?

5. How will you pursue this direction? Outline at least three lines of investigation. No need to go into the

nitty-gritty details of experimental design, but outline the general features. For example: One possibility is

to conduct as high-throughput screening of small molecule drugs that will do X in neurons over-expressing

molecule Y.

6. Potential pitfalls (limitations) of your approach

7. Summary (one paragraph): why is this line of research important?

8. References: what sources did you use to help shape your ideas?