closer to sure
THE ALZHEIMER'S CURE
report filed by
BEC CREW
______________________________________________________
PLACATING
THE PLAQUE
Australian
researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology
that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques - structures
that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive
function in Alzheimer’s patients.
If a
person has Alzheimer’s disease, it’s usually the result
of a build-up of two types of lesions - amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary
tangles.
Amyloid plaques sit between the neurons and end up as dense clusters
of beta-amyloid molecules, a sticky type of protein that clumps
together and forms plaques.
Neurofibrillary
tangles are found inside the neurons of the brain, and they’re
caused by defective tau proteins that clump up into a thick, insoluble
mass. This causes tiny filaments called microtubules to get all
twisted, which disrupts the transportation of essential materials
such as nutrients and organelles along them, just like when you
twist up the vacuum cleaner tube.
As we
don’t have any kind of vaccine or preventative measure for
Alzheimer’s - a disease that affects 343,000 people in Australia,
and 50 million worldwide - it’s been a race to figure out
how best to treat it, starting with how to clear the build-up
of defective beta-amyloid and tau proteins from a patient’s
brain. Now a team from the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at
the University of Queensland have come up with a pretty promising
solution for removing the former.
Publishing
in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes
the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called
a focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound
waves into the brain tissue. By oscillating super-fast, these
sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier,
which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and
stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to activate. Microglila
cells are basically waste-removal cells, so they’re able
to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps that are responsible
for the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s.
GET THE
PLAQUE OUT OF HERE
The team
reports fully restoring the memory function of 75 percent of the
mice they tested it on, with zero damage to the surrounding brain
tissue. They found that the treated mice displayed improved performance
in three memory tasks - a maze, a test to get them to recognise
new objects, and one to get them to remember the places they should
avoid.
"We’re
extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s
without using drug therapeutics," one of the team, Jürgen
Götz, said in a press release. "The word ‘breakthrough’
is often misused, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally
change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee
a great future for this approach."
The team
says they’re planning on starting trials with higher animal
models, such as sheep, and hope to get their human trials underway
in 2017.
