An anticancer drug rapidly returned to normal the brain functions in laboratory mice suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. This discovery may lead to obtaining an effective treatment for this incurable disease with devastating effects. The anticancer drug Targretin, chemically known as bexarotene did not only make disappear in mice 75% of amyloid beta, a form of protein which accumulation is one of the main pathological features of Alzheimer’s disease, but reversed symptoms of disease as memory loss.
Just 72 hours after starting the treatment with bexarotene, the lab mice – genetically modified to develop the equivalent of human Alzheimer’s disease – began to show normal behavior, the authors explained in the study, published in the Science magazine. Animals have regained their memory and sense of smell, the doctor Daniel Wesson said, assistant professor of neuroscience at the Case Western Reserve School of Medicine in Cleveland (Ohio, USA), lead author of the study. Loss of smell is often the first sign of Alzheimer’s disease in humans.
This finding is “unprecedented”, says Paige Cramer, a researcher at the same university and contributor to this study. “So far, the best of existing treatments for lab mice need several months to remove amyloid plaques”, he said. U.S. scientists discovery was based on a 2008 study that demonstrate that the main “vehicle” of cholesterol in the brain is a protein called Apolipoprotein E (ApoE), which facilitates the reduction of amyloid beta. An increase in the concentration of this protein in the brain accelerates “cleaning” of amyloid plaques that have accumulated.
Alzheimer’s appears, in most cases, when the aging body, is losing its ability to remove amyloid beta plaque that formed naturally in the brain. It seems that the drug bexarotene reprogram immune cells in the brain so that they can “devour” again the new amyloid deposits. Bexarotene, originally manufactured by the American laboratory Ligand Pharmaceuticals under the name Targretin, was approved by the U.S. Agency FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in 1999. It is used to treat a rare type of cancer called cutaneous T-cell lymphoma. Japanese laboratory Eisai acquired worldwide distribution rights for bexarotene in 2006.
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