A made in Italy hope against Alzheimer’s, here are the news
The Ebri Foundation in Rome, set up by Rita Levi-Montalcini, is studying a molecule that could become the key to treating Alzheimer's disease. All the details
Italy is the eighth country in the world most affected by dementia, there are one million and 400 thousand diagnosed cases, 600 thousand of which are of Alzheimer's alone. It is a disease that little by little or sometimes suddenly takes away the ability to relate to people, even those most dear to them who are no longer recognized and remembered.
In Italy, however, the European Brain Research Institute (Ebri) in Rome, founded by Rita Levi-Montalcini, is at the forefront of brain studies and some recent discoveries give some hope.
THE ROLE OF PROTEIN A13
In the video interview carried out by Ruggero Po, the neuropsychologist Elena Fiori explained where she is and what results have been achieved through the use of the A13 protein which hopefully will be the key that will open new avenues for the treatment of Alzheimer's.
“Alzheimer's disease – recalled Fiori – is caused by the damage to a protein called Beta42, which accumulates in increasingly complex structures to the point of causing the death of neurons. A13 is a fragment of antibody specific for Beta42 in its most toxic form, that of oligomer ".
In particular, “the A13, being very small, is able to penetrate cells very easily, making it an excellent candidate for gene therapy for Alzheimer's disease. The molecule – explained the neuropsychologist – is in fact able to modify the brain damage caused by the oligomers ".
WHERE WE ARE
As also pointed out by Fiore, there are still many other experiments to be done because for now the molecule has been tested only on some animal models and it is also necessary to test it at other stages of the disease because at the moment the data are related to a pre-symptomatic phase, therefore they are able to prevent the symptoms, but tests are underway to understand if it is able to reverse an initiated process and stop it.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/fondazione-ebri-una-speranza-made-in-italy-contro-alzheimer/ on Wed, 29 Jun 2022 04:52:32 +0000.