Researchers Successfully Immunize Mice Against AD.(Brief Article)

2001 AUG 22 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) --

New York University School of Medicine researchers have prevented the development of Alzheimer disease in mice genetically engineered with the human gene for the disease using a new vaccine.

The researchers are optimistic that this new vaccine is safer than one already being tested in early human clinical trials.

In a new study, the researchers report that the new vaccine, modeled on a fragment of a protein called amyloid, which is most frequently implicated in causing Alzheimer's, reduced the amount of amyloid plaque in the brains of mice by 89%. And, at the same time, the vaccine reduced the amount of soluble amyloid beta in the brain by 57%.

"Our study clearly shows that the vaccination approach is a powerful one that shows great promise for Alzheimer's disease," says Thomas Wisniewski, MD, associate professor of Neurology, Pathology, and Psychiatry at NYU School of Medicine, and one of the study's authors. "And significantly, our approach appears to be non-toxic," he says.

"We believe that our peptide vaccine isn't toxic to nerve cells because it doesn't aggregate into clumps; it remains in solution," says Blas Frangione, MD, PhD, professor of Pathology at NYU School of Medicine, an author of the study, and a pioneering researcher who played an important role in elucidating the role of amyloid proteins in AD and other forms of dementia.

The NYU researchers believe that early clinical trials of the new vaccine could begin within one year. The new study is published in the August 2, 2001, issue of the American Journal of Pathology. The lead author of the study is Einar Sigurdsson, PhD, research assistant professor at NYU School of Medicine.