Researchers have identified a new treatment candidate that appears to not only halt neurodegenerative symptoms in mouse models of dementia and Alzheim

Research News - Success in Reversing Dementia in Mice Sets the Stage for Human Clinical Trials | Tohoku University Global Site

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2021-06-30 23:00:10

Researchers have identified a new treatment candidate that appears to not only halt neurodegenerative symptoms in mouse models of dementia and Alzheimer's disease, but also reverse the effects of the disorders.

The team, based at Tohoku University, published their results on June 8 in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences. The treatment candidate has been declared safe by Japan's governing board, and the researchers plan to begin clinical trials in humans in the next year.

"There are currently no disease-modifying therapeutics for neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's disease, Lewy body dementia, Huntington disease and frontotemporal dementia in the world," said paper author Kohji Fukunaga, professor emeritus in Tohoku University's Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences. "We discovered the novel, disease-modifying therapeutic candidate SAK3, which, in our studies, rescued neurons in most protein-misfolding, neurodegenerative diseases."

In a previous study, the team found that the SAK3 molecule - the base structure of which is found in the enhancement of T-type Ca2+ channel activity - appeared to help improve memory and learning in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease.

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