Alzheimer’s scientists hail progress in singling out high-risk gene

SCIENTISTS have claimed an important breakthrough in the battle against Alzheimer’s after neutralising the most significant gene responsible for the disease for the first time.

A team in California identified the protein associated with the high-risk Apoe4 gene and then manage to prevent it damaging human neuron cells.

The study could open the door to a potential new drug capable of halting the disease, however the researchers urged caution because so far their compound has only been tried on collections of human cells in a laboratory. Having one copy of the Apoe4 gene more than doubles a person’s likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease, whereas having two copies increases the risk 12-fold.

In human neurons, misshapen Apoe4 protein cannot function properly and is broken down into diseasecausing fragments. This results in several common problems of Alzheimer’s disease, which affects 7.1 per cent of Britons above the age of 65, including the accumulation of protein tau and amyloid peptides.

The team at Gladstone Institutes set out to establish whether the presence of the protein was causing the damage, or whether a lack of it was to blame.

Using stem cell technology, they created neurons from skin cells donated by Alzheimer’s patients with two copies of the Apoe4 gene. By comparing the cells with those which did not produce an Apoe4 protein they concluded that the mere presence of the protein was causing brain damage.

They then applied a genetic “structure corrector”, which eliminated the signs of Alzheimer’s.

The research was published in the Nature Medicine journal.