New Alzheimer’s Discovery
It has definitely been an interesting year to say the least regarding Alzheimer’s research. We have learned about discoveries of possible preventative measures, as well as unfortunate news that an experimental drug was making symptoms worse instead of better. So, a new discovery provides hope once again, and may take us in a new direction in the battle against Alzheimer’s. Read the article below from the New York Times, and visit us at www.angelcaremn.com to learn more about dementia care available in the Minneapolis area.
Finding Suggests New Aim for Alzheimer’s Drugs
In a year when news about Alzheimer’s disease seems to whipsaw between encouraging and disheartening, a new discovery by an 84-year-old scientist has illuminated a new direction.
The scientist, Paul Greengard, who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his work on signaling in brain cells, still works in his Rockefeller University laboratory in New York City seven days a week, walking there from his apartment two blocks away, taking his aging Bernese mountain dog, Alpha.
He got interested in Alzheimer’s about 25 years ago when his wife’s father developed it, and his research is now supported by a philanthropic foundation that was started solely to allow him to study the disease.
It was mostly these funds and federal government grants that allowed him to find a new protein that is needed to make beta amyloid, which makes up the telltale plaque that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s.
The finding, to be published Thursday in the journal Nature, reveals a new potential drug target that, according to the prevailing hypothesis of the genesis of Alzheimer’s, could slow or halt the devastating effects of this now untreatable disease.
The work involves laboratory experiments and studies with mice — it is far from ready for the doctor’s office. But researchers, still reeling from the announcement two weeks ago by Eli Lilly that its experimental drug turned out to make Alzheimer’s worse, not better, were encouraged.
“This really is a new approach,” said Dr. Paul Aisen, of the University of California, San Diego. “The work is very strong, and it is very convincing.” Dr. Aisen directs a program financed by the National Institute on Aging to conduct clinical trials of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
