CHICAGO: For decades, intensive research has been conducted on drugs all over the world to treat Alzheimer’s patients. Although major progress has been made in diagnostics (the disease can be detected increasingly early and accurately), the therapeutic options remain limited. Together with researchers in Switzerland, Germany and India, the team headed by Professor Lawrence Rajendran from the Systems and Cell Biology of Neurodegeneration at the Institute of Regenerative Medicine of the University of Zurich has now developed a targeted substance that blocks the pathogenic function of an enzyme in the cells without affecting its other vital functions.
Protein deposits in the brain are hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease and partly responsible for the chronically progressive necrosis of the brain cells. Nowadays, these plaques can be detected at very early stages, long before the first symptoms of dementia appear. The protein clumps mainly consist of the β amyloid peptide (Aβ), a protein fragment that forms when two enzymes, β and γ secretase, cleave the amyloid precursor protein (APP) into three parts, including Aβ, which is toxic…