But its origin is unique: It was derived from healthy older people who may have some natural resistance to Alzheimer’s disease, Salloway says.
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An experimental drug totally destroyed toxic plaques in the brains of patients who had an early stage of Alzheimer’s, leading to huge hopes that this could pave the way to a cure.
Before we go into the details, let’s be clear that this is just one trial with a small number of participants, and “cautiously optimistic” is the name of the game here.
“This drug had a more profound effect in reversing amyloid-plaque burden than we have seen to date, ” Reimen told Nature.
Researchers in the United States and Switzerland tested the drug developed by biotech firm Biogen, on 165 people in their early stage of the disease for a period of one year.
Commenting on the research in a separate Nature article, Professor Eric Reiman, of Arizona University, wrote: “If these preliminary cognitive findings are confirmed in larger and more-definitive clinical trials, which are now under way, it would provide a shot in the arm in the fight against Alzheimer’s disease”.
“In the 10mg dose group, after one year you can see no red on the image, meaning the amyloid has nearly completely disappeared”.
The drug is not without side effects.
Each member of the five groups randomly divided got 12 monthly infusions of either placebo or aducanumab with doses of 1, 3, 6 or 10 milligrammes for every kilogramme of body weight. In it also, the drug cleared plaques from the brain of mice.
Alzheimer’s disease is marked by amyloid plaques, which are believed to be the main culprit in the most common form of dementia.
Amyloid deposits in the brain are the hallmark of the disease and amyloid beta-related toxicity is thought to be a primary cause of the neurodegeneration that underlies the characteristic progression of Alzheimer’s.
After patients took the drug for a year, brain scans showed scientists that there was an impressive reduction in the harmful plaques and dramatic improvement in cognitive function.
One of the many complications of sweeping away the protein plaques is that amyloid-beta tends to accumulate in blood vessels in the brain.
Biogen, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based maker of the drug, has introduced a study that primarily tested its safety in humans.
Aducanumab also showed positive effects on clinical symptoms the cognitive abilities and everyday activities of the patients.
Dr. Alfred Sandrock, chief medical officer for Biogen, said, “We think we have something important here”.
Funded by the Alzheimer’s Society, the group of researchers from Cardiff University, King’s College London and the University of Oxford studied blood from 292 individuals with the earliest signs of memory impairment and found a set of biomarkers (indicators of disease) that predicted whether or not a given individual would develop Alzheimer’s disease.
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“One day I could envisage treating people who have no symptoms because if you have amyloid in the brain it’s likely you’ll develop Alzheimer’s one day”.
