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Novel dementia vaccine on track for human trials within two years:
A newly published study has described the successful results in mice of a novel vaccine designed to prevent neurodegeneration associated with Alzheimer's disease. The researchers suggest this "dementia vaccine" is now ready for human trials, and if successful could become the "breakthrough of the next decade."
The new study, led by the Institute for Molecular Medicine and University of California, Irvine, describes the effect of a vaccine designed to generate antibodies that both prevent, and remove, the aggregation of amyloid and tau proteins in the brain. The accumulation of these two proteins is thought to be the primary pathological cause of neurodegeneration associated with Alzheimer's disease.
The research revealed the vaccine led to significant decreases in both tau and amyloid accumulation in the brains of bigenic mice engineered to exhibit aggregations of these toxic proteins. Many prior failed Alzheimer's treatments over the past few years have focused individually on either amyloid or tau protein reductions, but growing evidence suggests a synergistic relationship between the two toxic proteins may be driving neurodegeneration. Hence the hypothesis a combination therapy may be the most effective way to prevent this kind of dementia.
This new treatment combines two vaccines, dubbed AV-1959R and AV-1980R, which are designed to respectively target amyloid and tau protein aggregations. The vaccine is formulated in a novel adjuvant called Advax, developed by a team of Australian researchers to enhance vaccine immunogenicity.
Advax has been developed by Nikolai Petrovsky, a scientist from Australia's Flinders University who told ABC News Australia the new formulation offers the potential to act as both a preventative vaccine against the development of neurodegeneration, and a curative treatment in subjects already suffering from a build-up of these toxic proteins.
[...] The new research was published in the journal Alzheimer's Research & Therapy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @03:09PM (8 children)
No, they will apparently never learn to stop targeting amyloid beta. From the beginning it was a very weak correlation with questionable cause and effect. Today, it is a very weak correlation with questionable cause and effect and a circular definition.
30% of people without alzheimers symptoms have elevated amyloid beta. 30% of people with those symptoms have elevated amyloid beta. By definition, those people have Alzheimer's.
Amyloids are the most thermodynamic my favorable state for peptides to be in, any sort of disfunction will lead to their accumulation. That is why you find them elevated in every single diseased tissue ever checked. Just like oxidative stress.
It is apparently impossible for medical researchers to accept that the amyloid hypothesis became dogma based on nothing. No trial for anything targeting amyloid beta has ever shown promise, which leads me to believe it must even be protective in some way, by now at least one drug should have been approved randomly.
The previous acetylcholine hypothesis has more going for it and actually did lead to apparently useful treatments. Why was it replaced with this clearly false amyloid hypothesis which is apparently impossible to eradicate?
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday January 06 2020, @03:42PM (7 children)
In other words, my favorite cynicism: "popular misconception".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @03:54PM (6 children)
It is worse than just a misconception. The amyloid beta saga is the most unscientific thing going on in medicine. The understanding of disease has actually been regressing because of it.
It is a step backward from the previous acetylcholine hypothesis, and I've never seen any explanation for why/how it became dogma.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday January 06 2020, @04:27PM (5 children)
"Popular misconception" has a deeper meaning. I think you're the same AC person I've exchanged posts with here before, and you're quite literal, if that's the correct word, with word meanings. And that's okay, but there are often deeper meanings and implications.
For there to be a "popular misconception", you need people who are somewhat sheep-like, in that they will believe and glom onto some fad. There's another term for it that I forget, but it describes the concept of a fad, or something "viral"- people pile on without really thinking. Everyone is in such a race to be the first to discover something that they don't have time to deeply evaluate. I don't blame the individuals as much as I blame the whole system (of competition, rewards for being the first to the finish line, etc.) Not sure how to fix it, but something that rewards group collaboration more might help. But some people have a disproportionate share of ego, so maybe it's unfixable.
I remember reading about the amyloid beta deposits, and my first thought was "They're likely the waste product of the damage mechanism; I wonder what's causing them?" (prions?...)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @04:53PM (4 children)
It is more like when someone gets too sick to take out the trash, so it will accumulate in their house over time. Of course, accumulated trash can also be its own source of illness.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday January 06 2020, @05:34PM (3 children)
Interesting analogy. No proof that it would be the same situation inside a brain, but maybe tau and amyloid beta are prion fertilizer?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @05:53PM (2 children)
Prions and amyloids are the same thing.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday January 06 2020, @09:29PM (1 child)
Egads! I need to do my research... too busy with legal research right now... and normal tech work. would rather work in healthcare / medical / research...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @09:40PM
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4601216/ [nih.gov]