MIT scientists discover potential treatment for Alzheimer’s disease

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – Neuroscientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have discovered a possible treatment for Alzheimer’s disease and reversal of some of the neurological damage caused by dementia, the Jerusalem Post reports. The peer-reviewed MIT study was published Wednesday in the journal PNAS.

The new MIT treatment uses peptides to interact with the CDK5 enzyme that is overactive in Alzheimer’s patient’s brains, JPost said. The treatment has been tested on mice, and has been found to greatly reduce neurodegeneration and DNA damage in the brain.

In a statement to MIT News, Li-Huei Tsai, director of MIT’s Picower Institute for Learning and Memory and the senior author of the study, said: “We found that the effect of this peptide is just remarkable. We saw wonderful effects in terms of reducing neurodegeneration and neuroinflammatory responses, and even rescuing behavior deficits.”

Stuart Lipton, a professor of neuroscience at Scripps Research, added in a separate statement to MIT News: “Further development of such peptide inhibitors toward a lead therapeutic candidate, if proven to be selective for the target and relatively free of clinical side effects, may eventually lead to novel treatments for neurodegenerative disorders ranging from Alzheimer’s disease to Frontotemporal dementia to Parkinson’s disease.”

The MIT team will continue their research to understand which types of dementia might benefit from this treatment.

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