A team of researchers from the University of Barcelona (UB), in Spain, has developed a therapeutic compound with “promising” results to treat Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia and for which there are only drugs with a very limited efficacy and in slight stages of the disease.
According to this study, published in the magazine ACS Pharmacology & Translational Science, the new drug has shown to have neuroprotective and anti -inflammatory effects on two Murinos del Alzheimer’s models (essays with mice).
The patent of the discovered compound has graduated in a pharmaceutical company to implement the necessary preclinical and clinical trials for health approval.
The study is the culmination of seven years of research in which scientists have used a new approach, based on inflammatory processes that contribute to unleashing this incurable disease and modular their evolution.
According to the authors of the study, the strategies that have been unsuccessfully tested in the last ten years have been specifically directed to the accumulation of beta amyloid protein and the formation of plates in the brain, but there is evidence that indicates that neuroinflammation is one of the main causes of Alzheimer’s disease.
Therefore, addressing inflammatory processes has become “a promising therapeutic strategy,” the UB researchers indicate.
The new compound is an epoxide inhibitor soluble (SEH), an enzyme involved in the regulation of various physiological processes, including inflammation and pain response.
Inhibition of this enzyme, researchers explain, can increase the levels of epoxieic acidic acids (EET) – with bioactive molecules that are endogenous anti -inflammatories – and thus reduce neuroinflammation, in addition to promoting neuroprotection.
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Researchers develop a promising therapeutic compound against Alzheimer’s
The study results show that the treatment with the new compound had neuroprotective effects on two models of mice of Alzheimer’s disease, which culminate with an improvement in space and work memory and an improvement of the neuronal network.
This could help preserve neuronal function and reduce the neuronal death associated with Alzheimer’s disease, is aimed at the same study.
The advantage of this new drug compared to other anti -inflammatory compounds – which have failed in clinical trials and have not reached patients due to inefficiency – is shown that the increase in EET acids reduces transcription and levels of multiple pro -inflammatory markers and, at the same time, improves anti -inflammatory cytokines.
This global approach, which affects several inflammatory pathways simultaneously instead of acting in one, results in a neuroprotective effect that is sufficient to improve the symptomatology and pathology of Alzheimer’s disease, the researchers say.
The study also shows that the treatment with the enzyme inzima soluble hydrolase (SEH) enzyme, not only avoids the progression of the Alzheimer’s, but is capable of modifying its evolution.
Thus, according to researchers, the treatment maintains the effects of cognitive improvement even a month after having stopped administering the drug in mice.
They also found that the integrity of the neuronal network and the dendrites count was preserved (a component of neurons), which suggests that the treatment is not only symptomatic, but modifies the progression of the disease in the mouse model.
With EFE information.
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