WASHINGTON, Jun 20 (Reuters) - Researchers said on Tuesday they found a way
to tag the waxy "plaques" that clog the brains of Alzheimer's patients, offering
new routes for diagnosing and tracking progression of the disease.
The tag, a molecule called BSB, gets into the brain and attaches
specifically to the plaques, where it can be imaged by standard scanning
techniques, the team at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center said.
Amyloid plaques are one of the key features of Alzheimer's, an incurable,
progressive brain disease that causes dementia and affects 22 million people
worldwide. The waxy blobs are associated with the death of neurons, which result
in memory loss, disorientation and death.
Alzheimer's can be diagnosed with various tests of cognitive skills, but the
physical diagnosis is not final until a brain autopsy is done after death.
Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Dr. Virginia
M.Y. Lee and colleagues said their tag could offer a way to diagnose and check
the extent of Alzheimer's in living patients.
They have not tested it in people, but it worked in mice genetically
engineered to develop the disease. "We demonstrated unequivocally that the
compound can go through the blood-brain barrier and bind to amyloid," Lee said.
Marcelle Morrison-Bogorad of the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda,
Maryland, which funded the study, said, "This tool could help clinicians peer
into a person's brain and monitor amyloid levels in response to treatment. We
definitely need something like this to advance the diagnosis and treatment of
dementia."
The BSB tag is not perfect but can be seen when positron emission
spectography (PET) or single positron emission computer tomography (SPECT) scans
are used.
Lee hopes it might be a tool for checking whether Alzheimer's drugs are
working. There is no cure but some drugs seem to slow progression of the
disease. "The exciting promise of our agent is that, when clinically applied, it
will demonstrate efficacy of therapy in treatments designed to inhibit the
growth of amyloids," she said.
