New compound shows promise in treatment of Alzheimer’s

Authored by news.yale.edu and submitted by drewiepoodle

Yale researchers have identified a drinkable cocktail of designer molecules that interferes with a crucial first step of Alzheimer’s and even restores memories in mice, they report Jan. 2 in the journal Cell Reports.

The binding of amyloid beta peptides to prion proteins triggers a cascade of devasting events in the progression of Alzheimer’s — accumulation of plaques, a destructive immune system response, and damage to synapses.

“We wanted to find molecules that might have a therapeutic effect on this network,” said senior author Stephen Strittmatter, the Vincent Coates Professor of Neurology, professor of neuroscience, and director of the Yale Alzheimer Disease Research Center.

Strittmatter and research scientist Erik Gunther screened tens of thousands of compounds looking for molecules that might interfere with the damaging prion protein interaction with amyloid beta. They found that an old antibiotic looked like a promising candidate but was only active after decomposing to form a polymer. Related small polymers retained the benefit and also managed to pass through the blood-brain barrier.

They then dissolved the optimized polymeric compound and fed it to mice engineered to have a condition that mimics Alzheimer’s. They found that synapses in the brains were repaired and mice recovered lost memory.

A collaborating team at Dartmouth University reported a positive response when they delivered the same cocktail to cells modeled to have Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, a devasting neurological condition caused by infection with misfolded prion protein.

The next step is to verify the compounds aren’t toxic in preparation for translation to clinical trials for Alzheimer’s disease.

Research was funded by grants from the NIA, the NINDS, the Alzheimer’s Association and the Falk Medical Research Trust to Strittmatter.

teefour on January 3rd, 2019 at 00:45 UTC »

Any other chemists getting a bit triggered by the phrase "designer molecules"?

DICHOTOMY-REDDIT on January 2nd, 2019 at 23:43 UTC »

Reading the article I was excited but equally disappointed. My mother died of Alzheimer’s last June.

Maybe I missed something, what I read was positive results in the first stage. We and my mother really didn’t realize until 3rd stage.

I feel any steps towards this terrible disease are positive, my hope is a compound could/can be developed to stop the progression around the 3rd stage. I do realize reversing Alzheimer’s can’t be reversed, but holding it a bay stage 3 would be just not life saving but reduced family members years before their death.