Alzheimer’s Research Game Changer

On October 12th 2014 an article appeared in The New York Times by Gina Kolata entitled, Breakthrough Replicates Human Brain Cells for use in Alzheimer’s Research. The next day on October 13th 2014, the online website KurzweilAI (www.kurzweilai.net) featured an article entitled, Alzheimer’s-in-a-dish is ‘first clear evidence’ for amyloid hypothesis.

Both articles are reporting the work of Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi, director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Genetics and Aging Research Unit and investigator, Doo Yeon Kim, PhD who shared authorship in a report to Nature on Sunday October 12th.

The Kurzweil article began with, “Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers have created the first ‘Alzheimer’s-in-a-dish’ - a 3D petri dish capable of reproducing the full course of events underlying the development of Alzheimer’s disease.”

According to Dr. Tanzi, the key to their success was a suggestion by his colleague Doo Yeon Kim to grow human brain cells in a gel, where they formed networks as in an actual brain. They gave the neurons genes for Alzheimer’s disease. Within weeks they saw the hard Brillo-like clumps known as plaques and then the twisted sphaghetti-like coils known as tangles — the defining features of Alzheimer’s disease, The New York Times article stated.

Lead researcher, Dr. Rudolph E. Tanzi of MGH Boston, is now initiating an aggressive project to test 1200 drugs that are already on the market in addition to 5000 experimental ones that have finished the first phase of clinical testing. With the petri dish system, Dr. Tanzi states, “we can test hundreds of thousands of drugs in a matter of months.”

What’s so special about this dish research? Consider the following.

Mice Be Gone
It is an apparent successful breakaway from the laborious and expensive laboratory work associated historically with mice. Transgenic mice are carefully breed genetically controlled mice that have brains similar to we humans. Similar but not the same. In the ballpark but not in the exact tier, row and seat that is crucial.

A More Accurate Model
The dish research brings it all home in that human neuron cells from the outset are what’s being tinkered with. Researchers are viewing exactly how human rather than mouse cells are behaving and reacting. Thus a more accurate and exacting model of how the mechanics of Alzheimer’s disease works in the human brain is now available for research.

Accelerated Testing Process
New drug testing can now be profoundly accelerated going forward with the petri dish approach. Up to now, each single drug test with mice can take up to a year. It has been the absence of new drugs coming to market that has acted as the dark black cloud hanging over the Alzheimer’s community for too many years. Millions of people worldwide are dying every year without the hope of any new significant drugs coming to market that will slow down, let alone stop the disease. The last new Alzheimer’s medication that was approved by the FDA was Namenda back in 2003.

A Key Enzyme
An additional bonus discovery in this petri dish work was learning how to block the action of an enzyme known as GSK3-beta, an active agent in the formation of protein tau aggregates and tangles.

Going forward, I’m keeping my eye on how this petri-dish AD work advances.

We are long overdue for a breakthrough of some kind with our dementia diseases.

Three of our four parents passed away within the past two years with Alzheimer’s as either their primary cause of death or a co-contributing factor.

It’s time for a turning point involving Alzheimer’s.

Jeff Dodson
November 7th 2014