by With a few treatments that stop or reverse the Alzheimer disease, scientists have turned to the decline in cognitive decline as a potential means.
The cases of Alzheimer’s rise in the USA and worldwide due to an aging population, but there is no healing for the disease. Attempts to develop new treatments that slow down the progress of the disease instead of reducing the symptoms have often failed.
Only two medication – the antibody therapies Leqembi and Kisunla – are currently approved by the Food and Drug Administration in order to slow down the progress of early Alzheimer’s, and scientists say that their advantages are limited.
Some pharmaceutical companies have stopped or abandoned their Alzheimer drug development programs due to unsuccessful attempts. Others try to use existing medication, including weight loss medication to combat Alzheimer’s.
In this sense, researchers at the University of California San Francisco carried out a broad search for medication that could be converted to treat the disease – theoretically, which reduces the time when the medication could be made available to patients. They searched a database with more than 1,300 medication from different classes, including antipsychotics, antibiotics, antifungals and chemotherapy medication. Then they examined how these drugs influenced gene expression.
Her new study published in the journal cell on Monday identified two cancer medication as the best candidates to reduce the Alzheimer’s risk in patients. In combination, the medication seemed to slow down or reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s in mice. One of the medication is usually used to treat breast cancer, while the other is effective against colon and lung cancer.
The Alzheimer disease is associated with significant changes in the way genes are expressed in the brain, which leads to the increased production of certain proteins and the reduced production of others. These imbalances can disturb the brain function and contribute to symptoms such as memory loss.
Less than 90 medicines in the researchers’ database turned the expression of signature alzheimer’s relatives in human brain cells. In particular, five medication seemed to reduce Alzheimer’s risk in actual patients, based on electronic medical records. The authors finally selected two of these drugs, both of which were approved by the FDA to treat cancer to test for mice.
“We did not expect cancer medication,” said Marina Sirota, co -author of the study and interim director of the UCSF Bakar Computational Health Sciences Institute.
The authors said that the breast cancer drug Letrozol seemed to change gene expression in nerve cells. And the crab and lung cancer drug Irinotecan seemed to change gene expression in glial cells that support the nervous system. Alzheimer’s can destroy nerve cells and multiply glia cells, causing inflammation in the brain.
In A study 2020It was less likely that breast cancer patients who received Letrozol developed Alzheimer’s than patients who did not receive the medication. According to a 2021 study, survivors of colon cancer treated with Irinotecan also had a reduced Alzheimer risk.
After testing the medication in mice, the authors of the study found that the two-drug combination had reversed the brain regeneration and improved the memory of mice that had developed at the age of Alzheimer’s Alzheimer.
Since the results of mice often do not lead to humans, the researchers hope to test the medication in a clinical study with Alzheimer’s patients.
“The development of a new drug can take average more than 10 years more than 10 years. For this repeated medication, it usually only takes two or three years, and then you can go into the clinical study and the costs are much, much lower,” said Dr. Yadong Huang, a co-author of the study and professor of neurology at UCSF.
“We still have not produced or produced very effective medication that can dramatically slow down cognitive decline,” he added.
Part of the difficulty in developing medication for Alzheimer’s is the complexity of the disease. Its exact cause is largely unknown.
At the moment, according to the authors, it is unclear why the cancer medication seems to work against Alzheimer’s. One theory is that the breast cancer drug blocks estrogen production, a hormone that controls the expression of a large number of genes. The colon and lung cancer drug can also block inflammation in the brain by preventing glial cells from proliferation – although Huang said there are other ways.
Dr. Melanie McReynolds, assistant professor of biochemistry at Pennsylvania State University, which was not involved in the study, offered another theory.
Her research has pointed out that a different kind of cancer medication could help treat Alzheimer’s by regulating the glucose metabolism, the process, making energy through the cells. McReynolds said the process was necessary so that different brain cells can communicate with each other.
“With aging, with stress, with diseases, this communication line is disturbed,” she said.
McReynolds said that the drug combination tested in the new study could reverse the metabolic decline – which she called “the secret as a contribution to better results with Alzheimer’s”.
However, it will be important to assess how Alzheimer’s patients tolerate the combination of cancer medication. Letrozol can cause hot flashes and Irinotecan can lead to serious diarrhea. Both medication can lead to nausea and vomiting.
“These drugs have enormous side effects, so you always have to compensate for and find out whether these types of side effects are accessible to someone with Alzheimer’s,” said Sirota. “It’s not that it is a slam dark.”
This article was originally published on nbcnews.com
