‘Spectacular results’ in Alzheimer’s drug trial
A VACCINE for Alzheimer’s has produced “truly spectacular” results in early trials, offering hope that the disease can be stopped in its tracks.
Previous research has focused on targeting clusters, or plaques, of amyloid beta protein that form in the brain.
But experts in the UK and Germany have developed a pioneering approach that targets the protein when it’s in a soluble, not solid, state.
They created an antibody treatment and vaccine that halted the disease, reduced plaque formation and restored memory and nerve cell function during trials in mice.
Prof Mark Carr, at the University of Leicester, said: “The results are truly spectacular. I think you couldn’t ask for more encouraging data.”
Amyloid beta naturally exists as flexible, string-like molecules in solution, which can join together to form fibres and plaques.
For Alzheimer’s disease, experiments have focused on trying to clear plaques from the brain. But Prof Thomas Bayer, from the University
Medical Center Göttingen, and his team took a different approach.
British medical research charity LifeArc adapted the mouse antibody so it would not be rejected by the human immune system. Mark Carr from the University of Leicester then studied how the antibody was binding to the protein. The protein had folded back on itself into a never-seen-before hairpin shape.
His team hypothesised that this unusual shape may also occur when the protein is driving the disease.
So they engineered a stabilised form of the hairpin to create a vaccine that would induce the immune system to make antibodies to attack it.
The antibodies and vaccines helped mice with the disease. Human trials are the next step.
The research is in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.