New, Effective Treatment for Alzheimer's Disease Identified

A new treatment method that increases the breakdown of the protein clumps in the brain which are responsible for memory loss in patients with Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by a research group at Uppsala University.

In Alzheimer's disease, a peptide called amyloid-beta begins to form clumps which are called aggregates and this process is called aggregation. Currently, in clinical trials, the treatment methods which are available attempts to bind to these disease-causing aggregates. A disadvantage of this treatment method is that it is not able to bind to the smallest aggregates which are considered to be more toxic to neurons.

‘Somatostatin peptide is known to activate the breakdown of amyloid-beta which is responsible for the aggregates which cause Alzheimer�s disease.’

Somatostatin peptide is known to activate the breakdown of amyloid-beta which is responsible for the aggregates which cause Alzheimer's disease. In the past, a drawback of using somatostatin as a drug was that it stays in the blood for a few minutes and it could not enter the brain where the aggregates are present.

First author of the study, Fadi Rofo, doctoral student at the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences said, "So to be able to use somatostatin as a treatment, we fused it to a brain transport protein which allows the somatostatin to enter the brain. This has proved very effective. When we used the transport protein, we also saw that the time that the somatostatin remained in the brain increased to several days, which is fantastic."

The researchers observed that the greatest effect was seen in the hippocampus, the brain region responsible for forming memories; the first region affected by Alzheimer's disease.

Greta Hultqvist, assistant professor at the Department of Pharmaceutical Biosciences, who led the research study said "The fact that we have seen that the effect is most evident in the hippocampus in particular is very good. Our hope is that this method will be able to act in a very targeted way and have few side effects, which have been a problem in other studies."

Although this study was conducted in mice, the researchers have a belief that the drug somatostatin will have similar effects in humans and that this drug could be more effective than those drugs which have been in clinical trials so far.

Source: Medindia