Injection may obstruct progress of Alzheimer’s

An injection capable of halting the progress of Alzheimer’s could be available to patients within a decade, Britain’s leading dementia organisation has predicted.

The Alzheimer’s Society said recent breakthroughs in treatments that disrupt harmful genes had brought scientists to a ‘‘tipping point’’ in their fight against the disease.

For decades, researchers have sought a treatment for Alzheimer’s based on targeting damaging proteins that build up in the brain. However, the ‘‘remarkable’’ results of a recent trial that set out to silence the troublesome genes that regulate proteins in children with a rare spinal condition, has convinced scientists they could adopt the same approach in people at high risk of dementia.

Dr James Pickett, the head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said a spinal injection that prevents certain forms of the disease taking hold could be available in under 10 years.

The treatment, using so-called ‘‘molecular scissors’’, would not alter a person’s fundamental genetic code, but rather the way specific genes known to play a role in dementia communicate.

Such a drug would principally benefit around 18,000 people in the UK with a high risk of hereditary Alzheimer’s, approximately 2 per cent of the overall population of those with the disease.

There is currently no cure for any form of the disease.

‘‘2019 is a tipping point for dementia gene therapy,’’ Pickett said. ‘‘There are lots of different pieces of the puzzle coming together. We’ve got all of this genetic knowledge, like cancer researchers did 30 years ago, and we’re now investing in understanding it and exploiting it.’’

Scientists know of 25 genes that significantly increase a person’s risk of Alzheimer’s, up from just one in 2012. Researchers believe that the expression of these genes could be manipulated by means of CRISPR gene editing technology, which exploits a process used by the immune system to cut up the DNA of invading bacteria.

The proposed Alzheimer’s treatments would be ‘‘messenger therapies’’ that target the way genes regulate the activity of damaging protein in the brain.

Children suffering from spinal muscular atrophy who were given that style of treatment are currently still able to walk and are not relying on a ventilator, years after they were expected to have progressed to a debilitated state. –