News via Eureka Alert
Draining away brain’s toxic protein to stop Alzheimer’s
Scientists are trying a plumber’s approach to rid the brain of the amyloid buildup that plagues Alzheimer’s patients: Simply drain the toxic protein away.
That’s the method outlined in a paper published online August 12 by Nature Medicine. Scientists from the University of Rochester Medical Center show how the body’s natural way of ridding the body of the substance is flawed in people with the disease. Then the team demonstrated an experimental method in mice to fix the process, dramatically reducing the levels of the toxic protein in the brain and halting symptoms. The team is now working on developing a version of the protein that could be tested in people with the disease.
The approach doesn’t take direct aim at the pathology that is ubiquitous in the Alzheimer’s patients’ brains, where amyloid-beta forms a toxic plaque. Instead, researchers take an indirect approach, focusing not on the brain but rather on a protein that sops up amyloid-beta in the body, where it’s regarded as harmless. The scientists found that if they increase the body’s ability to soak up amyloid, the brain responds, causing levels of the substance in the brain – the real target – to plummet.
[…]