Dementia Information: ALZHEIMER'S & STROKE BRAIN DAMAGE VACCINE IN THE WORKS!

Dementia Information

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

ALZHEIMER'S & STROKE BRAIN DAMAGE VACCINE IN THE WORKS!

An article in Medical News Today seems hopeful to me that we may some day in the near future have a vaccine that will not only protect against stroke damage in the brain, but also against the cognitive damage in Alzheimer's disease. Researchers at Tel Aviv University's Department of Neurobiology at the George S. Wise Faculty of Life Sciences are currently testing this nasally delivered vaccine on mice with no signs of toxicity. Apparently the drug in the vaccine stimulates the immune system to gear up to fight against vascular damage in the brain by activating large numbers of macrophages, which are a natural mechanism to clean up any damage (in this case, the amyloid proteins in the brain) detected. Promising results in these animal models has shown that this action by the macrophages can help prevent further damage in the brain.

As I always caution, it's a HUGE step from mice to men in the testing for new drugs, but I still think this is very hopeful news.

Dr. Dan Frenkel is the lead researcher, along with students Veronica Lifshitz, Ronen Weiss and Tali Benromano. They also worked with MRI specialist Prof. Yaniv Assaf and his student Tamar Blumenfeld-Katzir of Tel Aviv University's Dept. of Neurobiology. The article URL is found at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/217776.php

posted by Cindy Keith # 5:08 PM

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Tuesday, March 08, 2011

ALZHEIMER'S & STROKE BRAIN DAMAGE VACCINE IN THE WORKS!

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