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St Vincent’s-led Team Discovers New Pathway for Treating Alzheimer's Disease
Researchers at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney have achieved a breakthrough in our understanding dementia and new way forward to its treatment. Through their discovery, the team restored nerve cell connections (synapses) that are destroyed in the Alzheimer’s brain, which are thought to store memory. Essentially they rescued memory without having to remove any of the protein clumps (beta-amyloid), which has long been thought to cause the disease.
The study provides a new understanding of Alzheimer's disease and a new approach to ultimately treating it.
St Vincent’s Sydney’s Professor Bryce Vissel – the leader of the international team of scientists behind the discovery – said that microscopic nerve cell connections in the brain, known as synapses, are thought to be essential to memory formation, but this has not been proven
“People living with Alzheimer’s experience a loss of these nerve cell connections which has been speculated to cause debilitating loss of memory that is synonymous with the disease,” said Professor Vissel.
“Our research set out to answer the question: by rescuing these connections, can we rescue memory?
“We now have compelling evidence, in a model of Alzheimer’s, that preventing the breakdown in these synapses is possible.
“This in turn rescues memory, offering a new way forward to understanding and treating the disease.”
The key to the discovery – set to be published this week in the world leading neurology journal Molecular Neurodegeneration – was the identification of a new process that regulates the connections between brain cells, known as ‘RNA editing’.
“RNA editing can be used as a 'molecular switch'. By flicking the switch in the mice models we use in our research we were able to stop the brain cell connections from breaking down.
“Remarkably, we discovered that by doing so we restored lost memory in the mice.
“For many years people have been focusing on removing amyloid (a build-up of protein) from the brain as a pathway to an Alzheimer’s cure but without any success.
“We found RNA editing worked to restore nerve cell connections without having to remove any amyloid from the animals' brains resulting in the return of memory.
“Dementia is now the number one cause of death of women in Australia. There are no cures.
“Having shown that preventing synapse loss offers a way forward to treating Alzheimer’s, our team will now accelerate work towards developing an effective treatment for this devastating disease,” Prof Vissel said.
Professor Bryce Vissel is available for interview.
Expert Reaction
These comments have been collated by the Science Media Centre to provide a variety of expert perspectives on this issue. Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Views expressed are the personal opinions of the experts named. They do not represent the views of the SMC or any other organisation unless specifically stated.
Solving memory loss would be the holy grail of Alzheimer’s research. The findings of this study are important because they provide a way forward to achieve that goal,
Science knows that synapse loss occurs in Alzheimer’s, and it is thought that this likely leads to memory dysfunction. We do not know how or why this occurs nor has it been proven that synapse loss is key to the disease. Professor Vissel’s discovery suggests that synapse loss is indeed important in Alzheimer’s, and that to solve the disease we need to restore the synapses. His work also shows a way forward to achieve that.
More specifically, Professor Vissel’s discovery shows that a specific process in the brain (a kind of ‘master switch’ called RNA editing) regulates memory and importantly controls memory loss in Alzheimer’s. When the ‘master switch’ is turned down synapses and memory is lost. When the ‘master switch’ is turned up, synapses and memory is retained. This is a very important discovery.
The study reveals that reversing the synapse loss is possible and reveals that this reversal is associated with rescuing learning and memory. This provides a specific and new idea as to how we can treat Alzheimer’s.
Given where we are with Alzheimer’s research worldwide, ie, largely stuck, this work could underpin how science approaches the development of treatments worldwide. For people with a disease that currently has no solutions, this will have immeasurable value.
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