Alzheimer’s disease is a common brain disorder that affects memory and thinking skills.
It can be heartbreaking to see loved ones slowly forget their family and friends, or struggle to remember simple tasks.
But there’s good news: two recent studies suggest new ways we might be able to treat this challenging disease, bringing hope to patients and their families.
The Alzheimer’s Association’s top science expert, Maria Carrillo, believes these new treatments show great promise.
The treatments in question use a special method of tweaking genes, a process known as gene editing. While this is an exciting advancement, there’s still a long way to go.
Gene Editing: A Powerful Tool
The term “gene editing” might sound a bit technical, but think of it like editing a document on your computer. In this case, the “document” is your DNA, the blueprint that tells your body how to work.
The tool being used to do this editing is called CRISPR. It’s like the “backspace” or “delete” button on your keyboard, allowing scientists to remove or change parts of your DNA.
These new studies use CRISPR to focus on two key parts of DNA linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Maria Carrillo is optimistic about this method. She hopes that this can lead to a future where we have many different treatments for Alzheimer’s.
These treatments could be mixed and matched to best fit each person’s needs, hopefully stopping the disease in its tracks.
Focus on Risky Genes
The first of the two studies looks at a specific gene, called APOE-e4. Think of a gene as a small section of your DNA that determines a particular characteristic, like your hair color.
Having this gene doesn’t mean you will definitely get Alzheimer’s, but it does make it more likely. If you have one copy of APOE-e4, your risk goes up two to three times. If you have two copies, your risk can go up by as much as twelve times.
The study shows that they could decrease the amount of APOE-e4 in two ways. First, they used tiny versions of human brains made in a lab.
Second, they used mice that had been changed to have human-like characteristics. And they could do this without changing the amounts of other, safer versions of the APOE gene.
Boris Kantor, a researcher at Duke University, is thrilled about these results. He believes this could be a new way to treat, and maybe even prevent, Alzheimer’s.
Another researcher at Duke, Ornit Chiba-Falek, agrees, saying these results are very promising.
Targeting Harmful Proteins
The second study looks at a protein called APP, which plays a key role in Alzheimer’s. APP can create two different things in your brain.
One is good for your brain, and one is bad. The bad one is called beta amyloid, and it can cause problems in your brain that lead to Alzheimer’s.
The researchers found that using CRISPR to change the APP protein led to good results in mice. There were fewer beta amyloid plaques, which are harmful clumps in the brain.
There were also more good APP products, and the mice had fewer symptoms of Alzheimer’s. And importantly, there were no bad side effects.
Brent Aulston, one of the researchers, believes these results show their treatment is safe and effective. He’s hopeful that these techniques can be tested in people soon.
These studies were shared at a major Alzheimer’s research conference in Amsterdam. While the results are promising, they’re still early findings.
They’ll need to be reviewed by other experts before we can say for sure how helpful these treatments will be. But for now, they give us hope that one day, we might be able to stop Alzheimer’s disease in its tracks.
If you care about brain health, please read studies about vitamin D deficiency linked to Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, and higher magnesium intake could help benefit brain health.
For more information about brain health, please see recent studies about antioxidants that could help reduce dementia risk, and coconut oil could help improve cognitive function in Alzheimer’s.
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