Drug compounds to combat neurodegenerative diseases

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Pharmacology News

Diseases And Conditions,Alzheimer's Research,Mad Cow Disease

Prions are the abnormal, pathogenic agents that are transmissible and are able to induce abnormal folding of specific normal cellular proteins. Prion disease is an umbrella term for a group of fatal and currently untreatable neurodegenerative diseases that not only affect humans, but also wild and captive animals.

These diseases include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans, bovine spongiform encephalopathy , and chronic wasting disease affecting deer, elk and moose.

In a new study, researchers from Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine have identified 10 compounds that are able to reduce PrPlevels in infected cells and have shown that the most potent molecules can also prevent the toxicity that was observed when applying PrP"Excitingly, five of these molecules have a history of use in humans: rimcazole and haloperidol for neuropsychiatric conditions, -pentazocine for neuropathic pain, and SA 4503 and ANAVEX2-73, which are in...

Using Neuro2a cells from an experimental model that had been infected with prions, these cells were then exposed to increasing concentrations of each drug, and the levels of PrPR genes, such that they no longer coded for a protein, and found this had no effect upon the decrease in PrPR were not responsible for the anti-prion effects of these drugs.

Human prion diseases include Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker disease . A new study reports a significant advance in the development of mouse models of human ...

 

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