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Breakthrough New drug ingredient against Alzheimer's deposits
Alzheimer's is still not curable. Accordingly, the treatment of neurodegenerative disease has so far been limited to alleviating the symptoms and slowing the progression of the disease. But now South Korean researchers may have made a medical breakthrough. As the team around YoungSoo Kim currently reports in the journal "Nature Communications", it has discovered in mice a molecule that could eliminate the disease-causing deposits in the brain.
Most common form of dementia with unclear causes
Alzheimer's disease is the most common type of dementia and is considered to be a typical old-age disease, affecting at least one in three people over the age of 90. According to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, around 700,000 people in Germany are suffering from Alzheimer's disease, with the pay expected to double by 2050 in the face of demographic change. Characteristic of the serious illness of the brain is the increasing loss of mental capacity, whereby typical symptoms such as forgetfulness, personality changes, speech and orientation difficulties occur.
New drug for Alzheimer's therapy. Image: Gina Sanders - fotolia The exact causes of Alzheimer's are still not fully understood. What is certain, however, is that in the patients increasingly characteristic protein deposits in the brain ("beta-amyloid peptides") are found, which play an important role in the development of the disease from an expert's point of view. Because the so-called "senile plaques" prevent the transmission of stimuli between the nerve cells, whereby these are increasingly impaired in their function and finally destroyed. New drugs used in the treatment of incurable Alzheimer's disease are therefore aimed at preventing the formation of new deposits. On the other hand, science has not yet been able to find a substance that destroys existing deposits.
Molecule can eliminate existing plaques
However, scientists from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) in Seoul may have gained important insights into Alzheimer's therapy. As reported in the journal "Nature Communications", it was possible to significantly increase the memory of diseased mice using the molecule EPPS. In addition, it has been shown that the molecule can even eliminate existing plaques, according to the team around YoungSoo Kim from KIST.
The mental performance of the animals increases significantly
Accordingly, the researchers had tested the molecule in a first step in the test tube and recognized where it came to destruction of the deposits. They then tested in an experiment with mice whose brains had Alzheimer-like deposits, what effects the molecule has in this case. It was shown that EPPS could prevent the formation of new plaques and even destroy existing deposits, whereupon the mental performance of the animals increased significantly.
"For the past three decades there has been a continuing controversy as to whether the accumulation of amyloid beta (Aβ) is a cause or rather an effect of Alzheimer's disease. In this study, we demonstrated that Alzheimer's related learning and memory deficits in a transgenic mouse model improved with an agent capable of dissecting Aβ oligomers and fibrils. Therefore, our study supports the view that the accumulation of Aß is a direct driver of Alzheimer's disease, "said the researchers in Nature Communications..
Transferability is questionable from the expert's point of view
But can the positive effect be transferred to humans? The neuropathologist Armin Giese of the University of Munich considers this critically, because "the tests used much higher EPPS concentrations in the test tube than were finally measured in the brain of the mice. As the expert continues in an interview with the news agency "dpa", it is therefore questionable "[...] whether the assumed mechanism of action of the substance in a laboratory experiment can also be applied to animal experiments or later in humans." (Nr)