New Drug Offers Novel Approach to Alzheimer's

Wed May 15, 2:03 PM ET

By Patricia Reaney

LONDON (Reuters) - A new drug that eliminates a natural protein in the body could pave the way for better treatments for Alzheimer's disease (news - web sites) and type II diabetes, scientists said on Wednesday.

Illnesses such as Alzheimer's develop when normal proteins fold in an unusual way and form clumps called amyloid deposits that damage tissue and organs.

After screening 100,000 compounds, Professor Mark Pepys and researchers at University College Medical School in London discovered a drug that removes a protein called SAP in the blood that sticks to the clumps and prevents the body from breaking them down.

When they tested it on 19 patients with a disease called systemic amyloidosis, a rare illness in which the clumps form in different organs in the body, it completely removed the protein and reduced the disease-causing amyloid deposits.

"We have developed a powerful new drug for which there is much evidence it may be helpful in treating systemic amyloidosis and possibly also Alzheimer's disease," Pepys told Reuters.

The drug targets SAP and prevents it from attaching to the amyloid deposits, allowing the body to get rid of them.

Pepys and his team, who collaborated with Swiss healthcare group Roche Holding AG, believe the drug may also be able to help remove amyloid deposits that occur in Alzheimer's disease and type II, or adult onset, diabetes.

"In Alzheimer's disease and type II diabetes there is a universal association of amyloid deposition with progression of the disease, but it is not proven that the amyloid deposits actually cause the disease," Pepys explained.

It is also not clear whether the amyloid deposits cause the loss of brain cells and the dementia that Alzheimer's patients experience.

Pepys, whose research is published in the science journal Nature, plans to begin testing the drug on Alzheimer's patients.

"It is a potential treatment for Alzheimer's because if our idea is right -- that removal of SAP promotes disappearance of the amyloid deposits -- this ought to happen in the patients with Alzheimer's as well," he said.

The drug, which Pepys said produces no side effects, completely removes SAP from the circulation and does not need to get into the brain to work.