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An Alzheimer's Nasal Spray Vaccine Is About to Enter Human Trials For The First Time
Alzheimer's treatments seemed like an unlikely prospect mere months ago.
Drug trials tried and failed for 20 years to produce treatments that would stop the progression of the disease, and several large pharmaceutical companies abandoned the mission of developing Alzheimer's treatments altogether.
[...] Now, the field of Alzheimer's treatments may finally be opening up.
Last week, Brigham and Women's Hospital announced it would spearhead the first human trial of a nasal vaccine for Alzheimer's, designed to prevent or slow the disease's progression.
The trial is small – 16 people between ages 60 to 85 with Alzheimer's symptoms will receive two doses of the vaccine one week apart. But it builds on decades of research suggesting that stimulating the immune system can help clear out beta-amyloid plaques in the brain.
[...] The vaccine sprays a drug called Protollin directly into the nasal passage, with the goal of activating immune cells to remove the plaque.
FDA OKs Phase 1 Trial of Nasal Spray Immunotherapy Protollin
Protollin is a new intranasal immunotherapy made of proteins derived from the outer membrane of certain bacteria. It works by stimulating the innate immune system — the part of the immune system that serves as the body's first line of defense — to clear amyloid-beta plaques and tau tangles from the brain.
It worked in mice, so it must be good.
Also at Medical News Today.
Related: Novel Dementia Vaccine on Track for Human Trials Within Two Years
(Score: 5, Interesting) by HiThere on Sunday November 28 2021, @04:23AM (4 children)
The mouse model of alzheimer's is a really poor match to the human disease. There's been lots of things that helped mice, but didn't do anything for people. Also, lots of things that cause reduced plaques in people don't have any beneficial effect on the progression of the disease.
That said, activating the immune system *is* a different approach. It's likely to have much wider systematic effects that just a single drug. So maybe.
Well, that's what the human tests are about. First you check if it's reasonably safe, then you check if it's effective. Only if it gets past both of those hurdles should you proceed to widespread human trials looking for rare problems. If this gets past the second hurdle most people will be pleasantly surprised, but the thing is that there *aren't* any good treatments. And there's nothing that's really promissing. So people look for the least unlikely. I understand that drug development is usually this way to some extent, but alzheimers is one of the stand out cases. We don't have a decent theory, even, of what the diseas is. We know some symptoms that usually show up. So any successful treatment will be from an unexpected direction. Let's not rule out spraying a vaccine up your nose without at least trying it. That is works in mice isn't a very strong recommendation, but it's better than nothing.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @06:31AM (1 child)
The latest miserable failure is not even an year old.
"Failure of first anti-tau antibody in Alzheimer disease highlights risks of history repeating", 10 December 2020
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41573-020-00217-7 [nature.com]
"Alzheimer's research - forgetful as always!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @03:14PM
Why not do reseatro find the true cause of Alzheimers? Well, you can get more money quicker with quack medicine. Because until there is proof that plaques cause Alzheimers, it's the same type of science as using leeches to remove the disease humours from the blood of an anaemic. Money money money, always money, it's a rich patent holder's world.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @07:38AM
At a minimum, vaccines such as this could end up being a good choice for patients with certain forms of FAD or EOAD since the effects of plaques and tangles are more established there.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @04:11PM
Let's hope the NIH and science funding bodies takes a look at who is really doing the work.
In my uni - and previous one too (in the US) - the people actually doing the work are untrained foreign kids with barely any supervision. The grant winners may look impressive but they are sipping latte and bullshitting at conferences, trying to score another big grant. The real scientists who put it rrrrrreal fucking hard time to learn the field and thus do real work have been squeezed out.
There is no place for them. It's grant winners (bullshitters) and cheap foreign students, who in the case of China count as another "win" for the bullshitters since China pays for them to come. The great bullshitters get a pay raise, the labor comes for free, do some bullshit who cares?! What's not to like?