Yorkshire scientists’ Alzheimer’s study may pave way for earlier treatment
Scientists from the University of Sheffield have made an Alzheimer’s discovery which could pave the way for earlier treatment of the disease.
People with the illness develop toxic plaques, or deposits, in the brain which are made mainly from a protein called amyloid-beta.
But the damage begins often decades before symptoms appear, with smaller particles forming from when someone is around 40 years old.
Now, in research led by the University of Sheffield, scientists have found a way to examine these particles one at a time. This gives a new hope for treatments that could stop the disease in its tracks before extensive brain damage occurs.
Dr Suman De, senior research fellow, said: “Alzheimer’s disease ruins lives and, sadly, current treatments have only limited efficacy.
“By the time current treatment begins, a great deal of damage has already been done, and clearing plaques at that stage cannot restore brain cells that have been lost.
“What we've found are targets that exist much earlier – the routes that form the damaging particles in the first place,” he added. “Understanding those routes gives future researchers something new to aim before extensive deposits and brain cell damage appear.”
The particles found in the brain years before symptoms develop are rare and short-lived, scientists have found.
This has made them very difficult to study, and has cast doubt over whether those seen in laboratory experiments are the same as those in the human brain.
Now the groundbreaking research is published in Nature Communications. It shows how scientists have been able to identify two distinct ‘fingerprints’ in laboratory settings, as well as in live tests, determining the routes the damaging particles form.
Current treatments focus on clearing brain plaques after they have formed, which has limited benefit as they cannot restore brain cells that have already been lost.
“If we can interfere with these routes, we may be acting before extensive harm occurs, rather than after it,” said Dr De.
“Although our research is in its infancy, these findings open up promising possibilities of future treatments.”
While some existing therapies can remove the plaques, the benefits are limited because deposits start forming decades before a person develops symptoms.
Scientists hope that by intervening at the point where the damaging particles are made, rather than at the deposits they eventually form, it can offer a way to act much earlier.
The team has been testing how they can interfere with these ‘routes’, using engineered proteins developed at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden.
In mice, they were able to reduce the level of plaque build-up, brain swelling and memory problems.
The approach is not limited to Alzheimer's, they add. The same method could be applied to other conditions in which proteins misfold and clump together.
Researchers at the University of Sheffield worked with colleagues at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, ETH Zurich and the University of Cambridge.