By Tony Austin
STOCKHOLM, Aug 08 (Reuters) - Sweden's Karolinska Institute announced on
Tuesday a research project aimed at finding a cure for Alzheimer's disease, the
commonest form of senile dementia.
Under an agreement with Sumitomo Pharmaceuticals Co of Japan, the Karolinska
team will try to advance beyond the present drugs which can only mildly affect
disease progression and reduce some symptoms of the disease.
"What we are hoping for is a drug to fend off and cure Alzheimer's," project
leader Professor Bengt Winblad said.
Sumitomo will pay 75 million Swedish crowns ($8.15 million) over a five-year
period to the Karolinska's Alzheimer's disease research center at the Huddinge
hospital south of Stockholm.
First identified by German neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer in 1906, the
disease is a degenerative ailment which gradually robs the patient of memory.
The damage to the brain is characterized by amyloid plaques and nerve
tangles.
"The hope is that we will find new targets for drugs, how the amyloid is
processed and how it develops," Winblad said. "The agreement with Sumitomo means
that we can recruit 15 to 20 top researchers from all over the world."
"This is a tremendous contribution," he added. "We will have the same
resources as American research centers have access to, but we also have clinics,
epidemiological research and clinical care as well as the basic research."
The Karolinska Institute, which is responsible for awarding the annual Nobel
Prize for Medicine, won the Sumitomo contract in competition with laboratories
in Britain and Germany.
Advances in other branches of medical science have pushed back the frontiers
of age in western societies without reducing the incidence of senile dementia.
About 150,000 people in Sweden alone suffer from Alzheimer's.
"It is (one of) the most costly disease affecting society," Winblad told
Reuters. "Between 5 and 10 percent of all people over the age of 65 suffer from
it, and many of them are in expensive institutional care."
