Toxic molecule may provide key for developing vaccine.

2003 MAY 14 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- University of California Irvine (UCI) researchers have discovered an important similarity in the causes of cell degeneration and death in diseases such as Alzheimer, Parkinson, Huntington, type 2 diabetes, and Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, suggesting that a single therapy could combat these different ailments.

UCI molecular biologists Charles Glabe and Rakez Kayed found that small toxic molecules believed to trigger cell damage in these diseases have a similar structure. The study, which appears in Science, implies that these molecules, called toxic soluble oligomers, share parallel functions, which makes them suitable targets for new drugs or vaccines that could halt progression of many degenerative diseases.

"This discovery will help focus attention on what may be the primary mechanism for degeneration and cell death," said Glabe, professor of molecular biology and biochemistry. "Whatever makes these molecules toxic is likely to be the same for all of the different types of oligomers in the different diseases."

During the progression of these degenerative diseases, proteins called amyloids accumulate as fibrils and begin to damage healthy cells. Oligomer molecules serve as intermediate building blocks during this fibril formation process, and recent studies have found that these oligomers constitute the toxic element that triggers this cell damage.

In the UCI study, the researchers applied an oligomer-specific antibody to amyloid proteins that have been identified in Alzheimer, Parkinson, Huntington, type 2 diabetes and prion-related disease. They found that the antibody bound only with the oligomer molecules, but did not bind with the normal amyloid proteins or amyloid ...