Your email address is safe with us. View our Privacy policy.
New drug may mitigate Alzheimer's disease
Yousef al-Abed, chief of medicinal chemistry at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research, designs medicines by creating novel molecular compounds.
In his latest work, al-Abed was looking for a way to target the amyloid plaques that clump together between neurons in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers discovered the medicine, CNI-14493, can transform amyloid into a form that doesn't aggregate to form plaques in the brain and also neutralizes the toxicity of the amyloid.
Al-Abed, along with Michael Bacher and Richard Dodel of Marburg University in Germany, found the amyloid burden in the brain was reduced by 70 percent to 85 percent in areas hard hit in Alzheimer's patients -- the cortex and the hippocampus.
"It's very exciting," said al-Abed. "Developing medicines is like doing a puzzle. You stare at it and gamble. Then you test it and if you are lucky you succeed. We were lucky."
The study appears in the Journal of Experimental Medicine.
Copyright 2008 by United Press International
This news arrived on: 06/23/2008
Printer Friendly Version | Send this page to a friend | Post Comment
Rate This Story:
Great - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1 - Bad
Posted Comments:
Comment archive | Comment FAQ's
 |
 |
View Science & Technology ezine stories by date or visit the complete archive |
The ArcaMax Politics channel is one of 70 content categories offered by ArcaMax Publishing on this ... |
Body Mass
