Monday, November 16, 2009

Alzheimer's- a Strange Form of Brain Cancer?

Biochemist Peter Davies has been investigating Alzheimer’s disease since the the 1970s, long before its full impact became clear. By 2030 it is estimated that roughly 7.5 million Americans will have this debilitating neurodegenerative disorder; by 2050, there will be something like 16 million patients with the disease. This disease costs the country over $148 billion a year. For decades, the prevailing theory was that memory loss associated with Alzheimer's was caused by the accumulation of microscopic lesion and protein fragments, called plaques and tangles, respectively, in the brain. It is unknown however, whether or not these two main abnormalities are the result of the disease process or if they are abnormalities that cause the disease. The majority of scientists, who's focus is on this debilitating disease, believe that the plaques, made of a protein fragment called beta-amyloid peptide (BAP), come first, and that the accumulation of this material causes the progression. They are called the BAPtists and are involved in numerous clinical trials that work on ways to prevent or block the production of amyloid in the brain. The other side of the disease is the tangle, made of a protein called tau. TAUists believe that this protein comes first and spend much of their resources on blocking the formation of tau.

Davies suspects the vast majority of research regarding Alzheimer's may be on the wrong track. There is a possibly that the disease is caused by improper cell division, not plaques or tangles. He and colleagues suspect that the culprit is the malfunctioning of the mechanisms that control cell division-- similary to what happens in cancer. His group, as well as other groups, have looked at cancer cell processes in Alzheimer’s disease to see if they might have the ability to cause the disease and have plaques and tangles as main features. They have suggested that nerve cells in affected regions of the Alzheimer brain seem as if they were trying to divide and several of the proteins characteristic of cancer cells show up in these nerve cells. One research group injected a viral gene into the brain cells of adult mice that caused them to turn on cell-division indefinitely. Interestingly, the mice showed an increase in tangles and plaques similar to those of Alzheimer's. Davies focus is finding out exactly how and why the nerve cells in the Alzheimer’s brain decide to turn on their cell division system.

This is an incredibly exciting time right now because the research community has more than 600 clinical trials going. Hopefully, of these hundreds of trials, one will provide an effective treatment for this disease. There are a variety of creative approaches, from drugs to monoclonal antibodies, and it’s hard to overstate the importance of that. We definitely need scientists like Davies expand our knowledge of Alzheimer's and ultimately develop a treatment to stop or prevent this debilitating disease.




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