United States: The researchers have been able to made an “exciting” breakthrough in fighting off Alzheimer’s disease through the development of a medicine that can help to stop the formation of toxic proteins in the head.
More about the news
According to Richard Oakley, associate director of research and innovation at the Alzheimer’s Society UK, which also funded the research, “This research is taking promising steps toward a new one-of-a-kind therapy which targets tau, a damaging protein in the brains of people living with Alzheimer’s, preventing it from clumping together,” New York Post reported.
Detail of development
Tau is a protein that naturally occurs at a state and is an endogenous protein that aids in stabilizing nerve cells in the brain.
These proteins can go bad by depositing themselves to form long, coiled, helical filamentous structures, which interfere with cell functions.
These clumps are called neurofibrillary tangles – they are the postmortem signature of Alzheimer’s, a neurodegenerative disorder occurring in approximately 7 million people.
Now, an international team led by Lancaster University in the UK says it may have found a way to stop the formation of the proteins, using a drug called RI-AG03, which “targets” two areas of tau where clumping is most likely to happen.
Moreover, as described by Amritpal Mudher, professor of neuroscience at the University of Southampton, “There are two regions of the tau protein that act like a zipper to enable it to aggregate,” the New York Post reported.
“For the first time, we have a drug that is effective in inhibiting both these regions,” Mudher added.
What more are the experts stating?
Scientists at the University of Southampton administered the drug to fruit flies with toxic tau and said that it halved neurodegeneration and increased the flies’ lifespan by about two weeks.
The life span of a fruit flies is about 40 to 50 days on average. Another research team from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center investigating this molecule also observed its ability to lower tau clumping in genetically engineered cells.