“ We’ve been able to identify the beginning of the Little Ice age, something that’s been very difficult to do in the past. ” — GIFFORD MILLER, PAGE 12
In the News
Cancer drug
shows promise
as treatment
for Alzheimer’s
In mice, medication clears
plaque-forming protein
STORY ONE
Untreated
By Laura Sanders
Treated
The brain of a mouse with an Alzheimer’s-like disease (top) accumulates plaques
of the protein A-beta (red) around brain cells (blue). The brain of a similar mouse
after three days of bexarotene treatment (bottom) has fewer plaques.
mice that had brains full of both kinds of
A-beta. Just hours after mice began taking bexarotene, levels of the smaller kind
of A-beta in their brains fell, reaching a
25 percent reduction after 24 hours.
After 14 days of treatment, plaque levels
fell by 75 percent, the team reports.
“Nothing tested comes anywhere
close to the speed with which existing
amyloid is washed away by this drug,”
says neuroscientist Samuel Gandy of
Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.
