A new way to combat Alzheimer's disease has been discovered by Takaomi Saido and his team at the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS) in Japan. Using mice with the disease, the researchers found that treatment with dopamine could alleviate physical symptoms in the brain as well as improve memory. Published in the scientific journal Science Signaling on August 6, the study examines dopamine's role in promoting the production of neprilysin, an enzyme that can break down the harmful plaques in the brain that are the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease.
If similar results are found in human clinical trials, it could lead to a fundamentally new way to treat the disease. The formation of hardened plaques around neurons is one of the earliest signs of Alzheimer's disease, often beginning decades before behavioral symptoms such as memory loss are detected. These plaques are formed from pieces of the peptide beta-amyloid that accumulate over time.
In the new study, Saido's team at RIKEN CBS focuses on the enzyme neprilysin because previous experiments showed that genetic manipulation that produces excess neprilysin in the brain-;a process called upregulation-;resulted in fewer beta-amyloid plaques and improved memory in mice. While genetically manipulating mice to produce neprilysin is useful experimentally, to treat people with the disease, we need a way to do it using medication. Neprilysin pills or an injection are not feasible because it cannot enter the brain from the blood stream.
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