Brain Implants Relieve Alzheimer's Damage

Genetically engineered cells implanted in mice have cleared away toxic plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease. The animals were sickened with a human gene that caused them to develop, at an accelerated rate, the disease that robs millions of elderly people of their memories. After receiving the doctored cells, the brain-muddling plaques melted away. If this works in humans, old age could be a much happier time of life.

Horrifying for whom?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Sure early Alzheimers must be a bit frustrating for the sufferer, but this is tempered by a loss of cognitive function (ie. you don't necessarily realise that you have the condition). It is probaly far more horrifying for the people who remember Jim being all bright and sharp but now see him dulled.M

I'd think that a stroke or other direct physical impediment must be far more frustrating for the actual sufferer.

Increasing Alzheimers is mostly a result of keeping people alive longer. No matter how age care progresses, there will always be a weakest link. The designed lifetime of the human body is being exceeded. Perhaps we should allow people to die earlier with dignity.

A couple big questions though...

[tfoss]

First off, here's the actual article [plosjournals.org], which was published in PLoS Medicine (meaning free access for everyone, yay).

Whether this accomplishment (and it is a pretty cool accomplishment) will be meaningful for people is very uncertain. First of all, Alzheimer's is not a positive diagnosis, that is you diagnose it by the absence of other explanations for observed behavior. So you don't actually have a way of confirming that the mental defects of a patient are *really* due to a-beta deposits. Unlike many diseases, we can't (yet) test blood or tissue or do imaging studies to confirm a-beta deposits (though there is tons of effort being spent on developing such tests). So you'd have to decide to do a pretty serious procedure on (generally) elderly people in less than ideal health on the basis of a flimsy diagnosis. It might well be worth it, but it is a big question.

Moreover, though, we don't really know what causes the neurodegeneration associated with amyloid diseases. We know that deposits or a-beta or tau tangles (or light-chain or huntingtin, or SOD or transthyretin [wikipedia.org] (which was the topic of my thesis work) or whatever amyloidogenic protein you like) correlate well with neurodegeneration. But whether those are the cause or not is still a very open question. In fact there is plenty of research around that suggests that amyloid deposits themselves are not damaging, but the precursors in the aggregation pathway are the real culprits. Some have even suggested that amyloid is a more or less inert structure that can be used to segregate potentially dangerously unstable proteins away from the rest of the cell.

So, supposing this treatment does everything perfectly, chops up a-beta and disintegrates plaques, *and* we can deliver it to correctly diagnosed patients, we still might not even be hitting the right target.

Not to be too down on this topic, but we are still quite a long way from a treatment, much less a cure.

-Ted

Is there any way I can help?

[Skychrono]

My greatest fear in life is forgetting important things - forgetting what makes me wake up every morning, forgetting the good in people, forgetting those close to me. I know some old people for whom I'd gladly shed off years of my life if it meant they could touch more people the way they touched me. Alzheimer's has always been the one thing that I've prayed they could avoid. So, I ask you Slashdotters - do you know of any way I can help here? Can I donate money to this cause somehow? What can _I_ do?

Re:What I want to know is..

[megaditto]

From your skin. And not 'brains' but connective tissue cells (fibroblasts) that are easy to grow.

It sounds pretty good but I am afraid it will not cure the disease. Permanent damage and the tissue/functionality lost are not restored, so I am afraid we would still need stem cells for a proper AD cure.

Removing amyloid.

[Climate Shill]

There's been a method for removing amyloid plaques from the brain since 2002. Elan Pharmaceuticals produced a vaccine [bbc.co.uk] which stimulated the immune system to produce antibodies against amyloid. Unfortunately, it's a cure, and cures are bad for business, so Elan abandoned it.

Re:Removing amyloid.

[pclminion]

I'm not afraid of death. I have been dead for billions of years before I was born.

A bit off topic, but I wanted to respond to this. Think about it. Before you existed, there were billions of years of nothing. And presumably, after you die, another eternity of nothing. So basically the world looks like this:

Nothing... Nothing... Nothing... flyingfsck exists... Nothing... Nothing... Nothing.

Notice that "flyingfsck" is special in this scenario -- he (she?) is the one who comes into being, and then dies. I ask you, what the heck is so special about YOU? Why is it YOU who flashes into existence for a brief few years and then disappears?

The answer is, there's nothing special at all about you. Which means the whole idea that your existence was preceded by "nothingness" and followed by "nothingless" must be inherently flawed. Just something to think about.