New Alzheimer’s drug?
October 26th, 2005 by RespiteMatch.comTrial anti-cancer agent may enhance learning, and animal studies indicate a brain-protecting effect
BY JAMIE TALAN
STAFF WRITER
October 25, 2005
An experimental cancer drug seems to have a surprising effect: It may aid in learning and memory, according to new animal studies.
The finding, reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, was so striking that the investigators are already talking to the Food and Drug Administration in an effort to begin human clincal trials.
“I was startled and very excited,” said Dr. Daniel L. Alkon, scientific director of the Blanchette Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute in Rockville, Md. The anti-cancer drug, called bryostatin, is a potent activator of protein kinase-C, an important cellular messenger in the body.
Scientists have also documented protein kinase-C’s role in learning and memory formation in the brain. Now, Alkon and colleagues have put this learning and memory finding to the test in snails. In the latest study, Alkon fed bryostatin to snails three days before they were put through several learning tasks. As the drug activated protein kinase-C, it led to long-term memories of the task. In other studies of animals prone to a disease akin to human Alzheimer’s, the medicine reduced buildup of the clumpy protein that accumulates in the brains of Alzheimer-prone animals, Alkon said. The mice in these studies lived longer: Normally, 80 percent of these mice would be dead within five months. The medicine reversed this equation. By five months, 80 percent were still alive.
The scientists say that the medicine could protect the Alzheimer’s brain by making protein kinase-C more readily available to create long-term memories.
“This drug can dramatically improve memory loss in a way no other drugs can do,” Alkon said.
The medicine has been tested for several years in humans and is known to be safe, Alkon said. It hasn’t turned out to be a blockbuster cancer drug, but could prove a boon if it works in Alzheimer’s, he added.
Developing medicines for Alzheimer’s is big business. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, there are an estimated 4.5 million American patients and growing. The Baby Boom generation, those born from 1946 to 1964, promises to swell the ranks of the memory-impaired in the coming decades. The current medicines work modestly to improve symptoms, but the latest medicines in development are aimed at stopping the underlying disease process itself.
“Relevance to Alzheimer’s? I don’t know,” said Dr. Peter Davies, the Resnick professor of pathology and neuroscience at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “It’s a nice piece of work in the snail model, but any possible link to Alzheimer’s is currently obscure.”
Copyright 2005 Newsday Inc.
