Epothilone D - a new class of AD drugs
(finding disease-modifying therapies)
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Finding a drug that can cross the blood-brain barrier is the bane of drug development for Alzheimer's disease and other neurological disorders of the brain. A new Penn study, published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, has found and tested in an animal model of Alzheimer's disease a class of drug that is able to enter the brain, where it stabilizes degenerating neurons and improves memory and learning. In the normal brain, the protein tau plays an important role in stabilizing structures called microtubules in nerve cells, which serve as tracks upon which cellular material is transported. In Alzheimer's disease and related disorders, tau becomes insoluble and forms clumps in the brain. One consequence of these aggregates is a depletion of normal tau, resulting in destabilization of the microtubule tracks that are critical for proper nerve-cell function. In 2005, the CNDR researchers showed that the anti-cancer drug paclitaxel (Taxol™) could improve spinal cord nerve function in mice with tau tangles in their brains, after the drug was absorbed at nerve termini in muscle. "However, paclitaxel and related drugs do not cross the blood-brain barrier" notes Brunden. "So we surveyed a number of additional microtubule-stabilizing agents and discovered that the epothilone class, and in particular epothilone D, readily entered and persisted in the brain." Read more: medilexicon.com
Barley beta-glucan as a cholesterol lowering agent
Increasing the intake of beta-glucans from barley may help to reduce LDL cholesterol, according to new research. Read more: nutraingredients.com
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