A team of researchers, led by the Spanish Magdalena Sastre, has developed a method to prevent Alzheimer's in mice by injecting a virus that allows to transmit a specific gene to the brain, according to a study published in Proceedings of The National Academy of Sciences.
This finding made by scientists at Imperial College in London, although it is in its early stages of research, could open the door to possible new treatments of the disease. Scientists consider that this gene, called PGC1-alpha, can prevent the formation of amyloid-beta péptida protein in cells in the laboratory.
This protein is the main component of amyloid plaques, a viscous mass of proteins found in the brain of people with Alzheimer's, and thought to trigger brain cell death.
This discovery can encourage new approaches to preventing or stopping the disease in its early stages. Although these findings are still very early, they suggest that this gene therapy may have potential therapeutic use for patients. There are still many obstacles to overcome, and currently the only way to transmit this gene is through direct injection into the brain.
The researchers injected the virus with the gene into two areas of the brain of mice where Alzheimer could develop, in the hippocampus (which controls short-term memory) and the cortex (which controls long-term memory), and are the first where Amyloid plaques begin.
The animals were treated in the first episodes of the disease, when they still do not have these plaques, and four months later it was found that the mice that had received the gene had very few of these plaques compared with the group of mice that had not been treated. Likewise, no loss of brain cells was recorded in the hippocampus.
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