Brain Implants Relieve Alzheimer's Damage

Genetically engineered cells implanted in mice have cleared away toxic plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. The animals were sickened with a human gene that caused them to develop, at an accelerated rate, the disease that robs millions of elderly people of their memories. After receiving the doctored cells, the brain-muddling plaques melted away. If this works in humans, old age could be a much happier time of life.

Comments

It's a great time to be a mouse...

[edashofy]

It's a fantastic time to be a mouse. Mouse with cancer? No problem. Mouse with alzheimers? No problem. Mouse with diabetes? Go ahead and have that Snicker bar, we have the cure for what ails ya.

Re:It's a great time to be a mouse...

[CheeseTroll]

Mouse with head still attached? Yep, they'll take care of that, too!

The best news

[Sunburnt]

I'm normally quite sarcastic when posting.

Not now. Alzheimer's Disease is one of the most horrifying maladies faced in societies where people live long enough to suffer from it.

I hope that this research pans out into practical treatment. Being betrayed by the body is terrible enough later in life.

Neprilysin

[wizardforce]

The Harvard team used skin cells from the animal's own body to introduce a gene for an amyloid-busting enzyme known as neprilysin. The skin cells, also known as fibroblasts, "do not form tumors or move from the implantation site," Hemming notes. "They cause no detectable adverse side effects and can easily be taken from a patient's skin." In addition, other genes can be added to the fibroblast-neprilysin combo, which will eliminate the implants if something starts to go wrong.

I suppose the simple genetic change isn't as likely to cause some immune reaction than the gene implanted via a virus- it should be a lot safer to just introduce cells with the gene instead of altering large sections of tissue in the human body. here's the enzyme they are talking about that is doing the good work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neprilysin

Great News

[polyex]

I feel strongly that your mind is the most important part of your body. Its truly what makes you unique,. This research progress is great news. I just wish there was some way to get my Father treatment. Someone once told me that one of the toughest time for a child is when he realizes his parents are mortal. Over the last couple of years I have had to watch a brilliant man slowly disintegrate into a shell of his former self (all the while knowing what was happening to him and that he really had no where to escape to). If you have a heart attack, you sometimes can do something about it, with better lifestyle eating etc. or even cancer, you can fight it with therapy and perhaps have the hope to be free of it. Not the case with this disease, and the worst part is that you know its happening to you as its slowly robs you and your loved ones of your last sanctuary, yourself. Dealing with this first hand has certainly had an effects on me and my outlook on life in ways that were not apparent to me at first. Any kind of progress against this disease simply makes my day.

A couple big questions though...

[tfoss]

First off, here's the actual article, which was published in PLoS Medicine (meaning free access for everyone, yay).

Whether this accomplishment (and it is a pretty cool accomplishment) will be meaningful for people is very uncertain. First of all, Alzheimer's is not a positive diagnosis, that is you diagnose it by the absence of other explanations for observed behavior. So you don't actually have a way of confirming that the mental defects of a patient are *really* due to a-beta deposits. Unlike many diseases, we can't (yet) test blood or tissue or do imaging studies to confirm a-beta deposits (though there is tons of effort being spent on developing such tests). So you'd have to decide to do a pretty serious procedure on (generally) elderly people in less than ideal health on the basis of a flimsy diagnosis. It might well be worth it, but it is a big question.

Moreover, though, we don't really know what causes the neurodegeneration associated with amyloid diseases. We know that deposits or a-beta or tau tangles (or light-chain or huntingtin, or SOD or transthyretin (which was the topic of my thesis work) or whatever amyloidogenic protein you like) correlate well with neurodegeneration. But whether those are the cause or not is still a very open question. In fact there is plenty of research around that suggests that amyloid deposits themselves are not damaging, but the precursors in the aggregation pathway are the real culprits. Some have even suggested that amyloid is a more or less inert structure that can be used to segregate potentially dangerously unstable proteins away from the rest of the cell.

So, supposing this treatment does everything perfectly, chops up a-beta and disintegrates plaques, *and* we can deliver it to correctly diagnosed patients, we still might not even be hitting the right target.

Not to be too down on this topic, but we are still quite a long way from a treatment, much less a cure.

-Ted

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[Sunburnt]

Sure early Alzheimers must be a bit frustrating for the sufferer, but this is tempered by a loss of cognitive function (ie. you don't necessarily realise that you have the condition).

In my secondhand experience, that is only a consolation once the disease is terminal. Before that point lies a great deal of suffering spread out over years, without any hope for even a partial rehabilitation.

Perhaps we should allow people to die earlier with dignity.

Death with dignity is an important right. To me, it's almost as compelling as the possibility of living longer with dignity. That's why this research is so important.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[Trogre]

How about spending every day convinced that you're eight years old, and that your (long dead) parents have abandoned you in a strange place?

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[wytcld]

you don't necessarily realise that you have the condition

Have you known anyone with it? You might not realize at first why something is wrong, but you see that others are treating you as if it is. It doesn't just strike the elderly; there's an early-onset variety. You lose your job because you're losing track of details too often. Shopkeepers start to realize they can get away with shortchanging you. Your car keys become more lost at home, more often, and when you drive you get more lost, more often. When you do become convinced something serious is going wrong, the doctors tell you that it could, perhaps be Alzheimers. But they have no sure way of diagnosing it prior to an autopsy. Your health insurance company - if you didn't lose that with your job - contests your claim because your doctors can't produce a definite diagnosis. Maybe you're just depressed? Maybe you're just a malingerer? Keeping track of the details needed to contest their denials becomes almost impossibly complex for you. Some days, you start to forget to eat. Other days, you're almost your normal self. The amazing plasticity of the brain allows you to mimic normal function socially well enough that some friends don't really see anything wrong. But you've got an awful feeling there is.

If you want Alzheimers patients "to die earlier with dignity" then you'll have to start killing them, like witches, at the first sign. Because for most of them it's the first thing to seriously go wrong. And for most of them it develops very, very slowly, sliding down a slope where by the time you might wish they'd say "Kill me now, please," any such rational choice is finally behind them.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[Squarewav]

Sadly Hollywood and TV make it look like Alzheimer's is nothing more then memory loss.

I live with my parents now to take care of my dad who has early onset late stage Alzheimer's. he most def knows something is wrong with him. He is unable to speak and it frustrates him to no end. He can't find the bathroom and we (me and my mom) have to figure out that he needs it and lead him to it. Even the most basic things like putting on his pants is a nightmarish exp for him.

Its not the watching some one fade away that makes things hard on the family. Its watching someone exp hell on earth and not being able to do a damn thing about it

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[NoPantsJim]

My grandfather passed away from Alzheimer's complications this Summer after living on his own for around 5 years. He sure as hell knew he had it. As recently as last October he was still in amazing physical shape, running daily to the gym, working out like a maniac, and running back to his home. Even at his old age, he could still do more pull ups than I can at 22 (and I'm no slouch, 28 palms forward from dead hang, he beat me with 33).

We noticed the first signs around Christmas. He began to act in an odd way and mixed up some of our names. We insisted he go to a doctor, who then told us he was so far along in the disease that he must have been suffering from it for at least a year. When we confronted him about it he told us he was embarrassed and did not want us to take his freedom away. It was amazing how quickly he declined in the next few months.

I was always very close with him, he actually bought me the truck I currently drive and has helped pay for some of my college. The last time I saw him he didn't know who I was, and asked me to tell him about myself. I talked to him for around four hours recounting my life and the times we had spent together. At the end he started crying because he said he wanted to remember my parents and me, but couldn't. When we left that day he told us he didn't want to live anymore, and died three days later.

The reason Alzheimer's is such a horrific disease is because it is such a tarnish on the life of the individual. My grandfather was in the Navy during World War II. He was an officer and was actually present in the room during the signing of the official surrender terms on the USS Missouri on V-J day. He spent the next 15 years as a stock car racer, and then owned a chain of mechanics shops for 20 years. He raised three successful children and had several grandchildren he was very close with. But when he died, he had absolutely zero recollection of any of this.

I just know that I don't want to go out and achieve all of my goals in life only to reach an age at which I cannot recall any of them.

Re:Horrifying for whom?

[rilister]

wow, that's a shockingly ignorant statement. Commenting on Slashdot on graphic cards when you no nothing about it is one thing, but on fatal diseases is a different kind of thing, dude.

A 'bit frustrating'? Most people are diagnosed a year or so into onset, but there's no real way of knowing when the disease starts. For many patients, there's literally (like, 5) years of knowing a) you have a disease that is 100% fatal and that you will gradually forget the names and faces of the people you love. b) you will eventually become a terrible burden on those same people, you will treat them badly and they will get to watch as you regress to less than a child. c) gradually losing all the mental faculties that you take for granted every day, knowing exactly why for several years.

It's terrible, frightening death sentence where the patient's personality is dismantled piece-by-piece, moving slowly to death, with their families watching helplessly on.

I've worked with patients with a number of chronic and fatal diseases (cancer, AIDS, etc...) and nothing would scare me more than a diagnosis of Alzheimer's.