Source: Thailand Medical News Dec 31, 2019 4 years, 11 months, 3 weeks, 19 hours, 46 minutes ago
A new preventive treatment for
dementia may proceed to clinical trials after successful animal testing.
The American-led research is looking to develop effective immunotherapy via a new
vaccine to remove 'brain plaque' and tau protein aggregates linked to Alzheimer's disease.
Successful results in recent studies in bigenic mice models supports progression to human trials in years to come, the researchers say.
The study findings published in the journal
Alzheimer's Research & Therapy paves the way for more work in 2020, with medical researchers at the Institute for Molecular Medicine and University of California, Irvine (UCI) working with a successful
vaccine formulated on adjuvant developed by Flinders University Professor Dr Nikolai Petrovsky in South Australia.
The research aims to come up with a new treatment to remove accumulated beta-amyloid (Aβ) plaques and neurofibrillary tangles composed of hyperphosphorylated tau, which together lead to neurodegeneration and cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease.
Currently,
alzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of age-related
dementia, affecting about 5.7 million people in the US. Major challenges in AD include the lack of effective treatments, reliable biomarkers, or preventive strategies.
Dr Anahit Ghochikyan, Professor of the Institute for Molecular Medicine and colleagues, Associate Professors Dr Hvat Davtyan and Dr Mathew Blurton-Jones from UCI, and other co-authors tested the universal MultiTEP platform-based
vaccines formulated in the adjuvant developed at Professor Petrovsky's Australian lab.
The new possible therapies were tested in bigenic mice with mix Aβ and tau pathologies.
Lead author Professor Dr Ghochikyan told
Thailand Medical News,"Taken together, these findings warrant further development of this dual
vaccination strategy based on the MultiTEP technology for ultimate testing in human Alzheimer's disease."
Dr Petrovsky says the Advax adjuvant method is a pivotal system to help take the combination MultiTEP-based Aβ/tau
vaccines therapy, as well as separate
vaccines targeting these pathological molecules, to clinical trials, perhaps within two years.
Dr Petrovsky, who will work in the US for the next three months commented,"Our approach is looking to cover all bases and get past previous roadblocks in finding a therapy to slow the accumulation of Aβ/tau molecules and delay AD progression in a the rising number of people around the world."
In the past, several promising drug candidates have failed in clinical trials so the search for new preventions or therapies continues.
A new report on human monoclonal antibody, aducanumab, showed that high dose of th
is antibody reduced clinical decline in patients with early AD as measured by primary and secondary endpoints. However, it is obvious that it could not be used as a preventive measure in healthy subjects due to the need for frequent (monthly) administration of high concentrations of immunotherapeutic.
Dr Ghochikyan says there is a pressing need to keep searching for new preventive vaccine to delay AD and slow down progression of this devastating disease.
The novel combined
vaccination approach could potentially be used to induce strong immune responses to both of the hallmark pathologies of AD in a broad population base of
vaccinated subjects with high MHC (major histocompatibility complex) class II gene polymorphisms, the new paper concludes.
Reference : Hayk Davtyan et al, Testing a MultiTEP-based combination vaccine to reduce Aβ and tau pathology in Tau22/5xFAD bigenic mice, Alzheimer's Research & Therapy (2019). DOI: 10.1186/s13195-019-0556-2
