[HN Gopher] Molecule restores cognition and memory in Alzheimer'...
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Molecule restores cognition and memory in Alzheimer's disease mouse
study
Author : geox
Score : 46 points
Date : 2024-08-23 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newsroom.ucla.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (newsroom.ucla.edu)
| nick__m wrote:
| Figure s3 in the supplemental materials1 is quite beautiful and
| the molecule (table s1) look simple for something that restore
| cognition. Lets hope that it also works in human.
|
| 1-
| https://www.pnas.org/action/downloadSupplement?doi=10.1073%2...
| ned_at_codomain wrote:
| > The molecule, DDL-920, works differently from recent FDA-
| approved drugs for Alzheimer's disease such as lecanemab and
| aducanumab, which remove harmful plaque that accumulates in the
| brains of Alzheimer's disease patients. While removing this
| plaque has been shown to slow the rate of cognitive decline, it
| does not restore the memory or remedy cognitive impairments.
|
| Thankful researchers are exploring some new approaches now. The
| amyloid hypothesis was fine, but its dominance seems to have set
| Alzheimer's research back by years.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| There was always a lot of evidence to suggest that Amyloid
| plaque was not the cause of the problem but a sign of the
| activity causing the issue and the fact it was the only pursued
| strategy for years speaks to a problem in medicine and research
| funding getting very railroaded at times. Many diseases have
| many potential causes but once a favourite gets selected there
| is a real tendency for all efforts to go towards that theory
| and even when early signs are its wrong it continues for years.
| Alzheimer research went seriously wrong for multiple decades.
| feoren wrote:
| In the particular case of Alzheimer's, some of the
| foundational studies supporting the amyloid plaque hypothesis
| were literally fraudulent. Railroading is a problem in
| general, but won't combat just straight-up fraud. Better
| fraud detection is needed in cases like these, but of course
| it's an arms race.
| amluto wrote:
| This appears to be a duplicate of
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41194750
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Whether this is valid in humans likely depends on the Alzeimers
| mouse model. Some of the mouse models are really good because we
| can inject the mouse with something humans get and they suffer a
| similar fate. But for a lot of these complex diseases the
| analogues can be very unrepresentative or require genetically
| modified mice and they tend to translate less well.
|
| "researchers used mice that were genetically modified to have
| symptoms of Alzheimer's disease" is what I am concerned about. I
| remain hopeful it translates across and IDO1 has been implicated
| in a bunch of conditions so such a drug might find some other
| uses.
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| I'd be curious about what the authors thoughts are on this
| molecule decreasing the threshold for seizures. I know they
| reported there were no clearly adverse effects throughout the
| study, but it's not like they had the mice on continuous EEG for
| epileptic events.
| robwwilliams wrote:
| This link and promotional piece from UCLA was discuss two weeks
| ago. At least UCLA understands PR.
|
| https://www.uclahealth.org/news/release/molecule-restores-co...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe]
|
| Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41194750
| jmward01 wrote:
| Soon mice will live forever, with 100% cognitive function, no
| hair loss and free of cancer. Now if only we could do the same
| for people.
| narrator wrote:
| With negative GABA receptor allosteric modulators there's the
| potential for excitotoxicity. GABA receptors are there to
| counteract excessive excitatory activity after all. Likely
| there's a small therapeutic dosage window.
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