Alzheimer Patients Aided by a Cancer Drug
The Journal of Alzheimer`s Disease September issue presented a research regarding the effects of a drug given to cancer suffering patients in treating the memory loss in the case of Alzheimer disease. This study was supervised by a team of researchers from the Columbia University Medical Center. The research received support from Disease Research Zenith Award, National Institutes of Health Grant, United Kingdom Alzheimer’s Research Trust Pilot Grant, The International Sephardic Educational Foundation Scholarship, The Lewis Family Trust Scholarship, The Sidney & Elizabeth Corob Charitable Trust Scholarship and, last but not least, the Charlotte and Yule Bogue Research Fellowships.
Alzheimer suffering patients show as first sign of their illness the loss of short-term memory. Ph. D. Ottavio Arancio, the research leader, states that: “People often joke that they must have Alzheimer’s because they can’t remember where they put their keys, but for a person with the disease, this type of short-term memory loss is extremely debilitating”. It is thought that Alzheimer will infect 120 million persons all over the Globe by 2050.
The first tests with the cancer drug were made on the brain of the mice suffering from Alzheimer. The mechanism of this treatment has to do with the way in which the brain creates new memories. The neurons use chemical groups called acetyls that disentangle the DNA in order to read the genetic information it holds. The next step is to form proteins based on the data gathered from the DNA.
The scientists conducting the study observed that it took half as many chemical reactive groups to be attached to the DNA in the case of Alzheimer suffering mice than in the case of healthy ones. And even by doing this, the sick mice still had problems with their memory. However, the scientists found out that they could counteract this by giving the mice cancer drugs which contain HDAC inhibitors. This group of compounds speeds up the unwinding DNA process and also improved the memory of sick mice reaching even the state of healthy ones.
Doctor Francis states that in order to have memories one brain`s needs to have the capacity of unwinding and reading the DNA information in order to generate proteins at the cell level. Having proven that the cancer drug is very effective in the case of Alzheimer, researchers hope that the approved cancer drug will have the chance to be tested on people suffering from Alzheimer in less than 3 or 4 years.
