Protein against Alzheimer's disease?

Research on mechanisms to participate in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, stroke, dementia, Parkinson's, some sclerosis, has achieved a new step through the efforts of PhD students. biology Sonia Do Carmo, under the guidance of Professor Éric Rassart of the Department of Biology Université du Québec à Montreal (UQAM), in collaboration with other researchers of Armand-Frappier Academy and Valladolid University, Spain Home

Do Carmo and collaborators have successfully demonstrated the protective and therapeutic role of apolipoprotein D, or ApoD, for neurodegenerative diseases. Their findings open a new direction in preventing and delaying the development of these diseases.

These studies followed the work done by Professor Rassart's team 10 years ago, who later discovered an increase in ApoD in the human brain with some types of neurodegenerative disorders, including including Alzheimer's.The research team theorized that the protein may have a protective and therapeutic role, but was unable to prove it at the time.

Experiment

To demonstrate the protective and therapeutic role of ApoD, the researchers used two genetically modified mice: one with more ApoD concentrations in the brain and the second one without ApoD. . Both types of rats were then exposed to neurodegenerative agents. A group of mice was changed and a control group was exposed to paraquat, a widely used herbicide that increased the risk of Parkinson's disease.

Alzheimer's. (Photo: drkassicieh.com)

Then the same type of experiment was done by injecting the virus that causes encephalitis into two groups of mice. In both cases, the mice were altered to have higher ApoD levels with the best results, with higher resistance to disease and higher survival rates. The mice without ApoD had the poorest results. These experiments illustrate the protective and therapeutic role of this protein.

When are pharmaceuticals put into use?

Some steps still need to be taken before the study can specialize in effective drugs that treat neurodegenerative conditions. The pioneer researcher, Professor Éric Rassart, explains: 'You cannot simply inject ApoD, because it must be accessible in the brain to work. We have successfully demonstrated the role of ApoD, but we need to understand the activity of this protein. Only then will we be able to think of creating the type to stop these neurological diseases and slow their progress. This finding by Sonia Do Carmo and collaborators is an important step, because we know very little about the mechanism of neurodegenerative diseases. '

This finding has created considerable interest in the molecular biology community. Two major scientific journals have published the findings of the study: Aging Cell (Vol. 7: 506-515, 2008) and Neuroscience (Vol. 28: 10330-10338, 2008).