Meet the Utah professor who thinks she’s on the cusp of a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s disease after drug caused ‘complete reversal’ of symptoms in mice
First, Dr. Donna J Cross saw how Alzheimer’s disease robbed her grandmother of her independence, personality, and ultimately her life.
Now the disease has taken hold of her father-in-law’s brain, who is now experiencing the same slow and heartbreaking decline.
It may be too late for them, but Dr. Cross wants to save the millions of people diagnosed with the mind-consuming disease.
She believes she is on the cusp of a breakthrough after a repurposed cancer drug caused the “complete reversal” of cognitive decline in mice with Alzheimer’s disease.
‘This is my passion. It started personally for me; That’s still true, to a large extent,” Dr. Cross said.
Alzheimer’s disease is the most common cause of dementia and an estimated 6 million Americans suffer from it
Dozens of drugs to slow cognitive decline in dementia over the past decade have shown no real benefit. Researchers have turned to established drugs in hopes of using what is already available to provide patients with a viable treatment for Alzheimer’s disease as quickly as possible.
Dr. Cross studied Paclitaxel, a chemotherapy drug approved by the FDA in 1992.
It works by binding to a protein that forms the supporting structures of cells that help them divide and spread. By strengthening these structures, the drug can prevent cells from dividing into two new cells, which is how cancer grows.
The drug also activates certain pathways that ultimately kill damaged cells.
Dr. Donna Cross found that a chemotherapy drug reversed cognitive decline in mice with Alzheimer’s disease
Research by Dr. Cross over the past decade has shown that it can also strengthen the structures of neurons that can be damaged over time as Alzheimer’s disease progresses.
The big breakthrough came when she administered the drug through the noses of mice with Alzheimer’s disease.
The drug caused “a complete reversal of their cognitive deficit,” the researchers said Desert News.
The finding was a big victory for Dr. Cross and fellow researchers, especially given the long trail of failed drugs that targeted a long-accepted hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.
Focusing on a proven cancer drug could usher in a new wave of already approved drugs to treat the disease in a much shorter time than it would take to develop a new drug, which may not even be will work. scratch.
Dr. Cross said, “Whether that would happen in humans, we still have a lot of work to do,” adding that if it did, “it would be huge.”
“We would treat not only Alzheimer’s disease, but also any form of dementia: ALS, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, any form of condition where nerve cells die.”
She would have to create a version of the drug that could cross the human blood-brain barrier (BBB), which is no easy feat.
The BBB is a network of blood vessels and tissue that serves as a protective layer that lines the inside of the brain and protects it from toxins.
Many drugs cannot pass through this protective layer around the human brain, which is a major obstacle for cancer drugs, for example.
But Dr. Cross found that administering the drug through the nose was effective at crossing the BBB in mice, and would likely do the same in humans.
The next step is preparing the drug for clinical trials, an expensive undertaking with a potentially prohibitive return on investment.
She said, “Even though it’s too late for my grandmother and probably too late for my father-in-law, it’s not too late for large numbers of people in the world, so we have to keep moving forward.”
She received her PhD in neuroscience from the University of Michigan in search of a cure.
She then went to the University of Washington and eventually to the University of Utah, where she currently directs the neuroimaging and biotechnology laboratory.
The above graph shows how the death rate from Alzheimer’s disease has increased in the United States. This may be related to the fact that more elderly people are living longer
That’s where Dr. Jindrich (Henry) Kopecek and Dr. Jiyuan (Jane) Yang came in.
Both chemists at the university had an office next to Dr.’s. Cross, who was placed there simply because there was space.
She began a collaboration with them to develop the drug and prepare it for clinical trials.
Dr. Cross said, “These guys are rock stars. I came to them as a brain person interested in treating neurological disorders, and they are the drug development/delivery people. It is a collaboration that is very strong because of our different expertise.’
An estimated six million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, most of whom are 65 years or older.
Currently, there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, although there are treatments that can slow the progression of the disease.
It is believed to arise from the buildup of sticky proteins in the brain called beta-amyloid.
A brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease overproduces the precursor proteins that generate amyloid beta, which occur in abnormal shapes and clump together into clusters.
These clusters disrupt normal neuronal function and disrupt cell signaling pathways, ultimately killing cells.
But drugs that target amyloid have repeatedly failed, providing little benefit while increasing the risk of brain hemorrhage, calling into question the common orthodoxy about the cause of Alzheimer’s disease and how progress in killing brain cells is best stopped.
Dr. Cross will present her research this week at the Alzheimer’s & Caregiving Education Conference.