Share this to:

Support & Insight for the Autumn of Life

Dasatinib for Cancer a Potential Alzheimer’s Drug

RESEARCH & TREATMENT:

Researchers find an experimental drug for liver cancer and Dasatinib, approved for chronic myeloid leukemia, act upon some Alzheimer’s disease related proteins — suggesting they could be potential Alzheimer’s therapies. Learn more.


Existing and emerging cancer drugs could be repurposed as therapies to be tested in clinical trials for people at genetic risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to a new study published in Science Advances.

Research combining analysis of brain protein alterations in these individuals as well as laboratory experiments in animal models and cell cultures could help scientists identify existing drugs to test for their potential as Alzheimer’s interventions more quickly.

The findings represent efforts from researchers at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health; and NIA-supported teams at the University of California, San Francisco; Rush University, Chicago; and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City.

What they did

The scientists identified brain protein changes related to the APOE4 genetic risk variant in young postmortem study participants (average age at death was 39 years) and compared these changes with those in the autopsied brains of people with Alzheimer’s and those without (average age at death was 89 years).

The analyses included brain samples from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, the Religious Orders Study, and other NIA-funded studies.

The researchers then tested whether existing Food and Drug Administration-approved or experimental drugs for other diseases act upon some of these proteins.

Two potential new treatments found

Their findings show an experimental drug for liver cancer and Dasatinib, approved for chronic myeloid leukemia, act upon some of these Alzheimer’s disease related proteins, suggesting they could be potential Alzheimer’s therapies.

The drugs also reduced neuroinflammation, amyloid secretion, and tau phosphorylation in cell culture experiments, underscoring their potential as candidates to be tested in Alzheimer’s clinical trials.

These findings add to evidence from another recent study showing the value of this kind of data-driven approach to drug repurposing research. Next steps could include testing these drugs in clinical trials. For those already FDA-approved or that have already been tested for safety in other trials, the timeline for testing could be decreased.

MORE INFO:

  • NIA leads NIH’s systematic planning, development, and implementation of research milestones to achieve the goal of effectively treating and preventing Alzheimer’s and related dementias. This research is related to Milestone 7.B, “Initiate research programs for translational bioinformatics and network pharmacology to support rational drug repositioning and combination therapy from discovery through clinical development” and Milestone 7.C, “Continue to develop resources, capabilities and partnerships to advance data-driven drug repositioning and combination therapy.”

  • The research in this paper was funded by the NIA Intramural Research Program (1ZIAAG000436-01) and NIH grants P30AG10161, R01AG15819, R01AG053987, U01AG046170, and RF1AG057440.

SOURCE:

REFERENCE:

  • Roberts J et al. A brain proteomic signature of incipient Alzheimer’s disease in young APOE e4 carriers identifies novel drug targets. Science Advances. 2021. Nov. 10. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abi8178

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
B. Berger

B. Berger

Visit Our Pages On:

Welcome

This site was inspired by my Mom’s autoimmune dementia.

It is a place where we separate out the wheat from the chaffe, the important articles & videos from each week’s river of news. With a new post on Alzheimer’s or dementia appearing on the internet every 7 minutes, the site’s focus on the best information has been a help to many over the past 15 years. Thanks to our many subscribers for your supportive feedback.

The site is dedicated to all those preserving the dignity of the community of people living with dementia.

Peter Berger, Editor

Related

person wearing hearing aid
Can Hearing Aids Diminish Dementia?
Hearing loss and dementia may be linked, but there is a silver lining here.
Black tweezers on white background.
CLR01 Beats Curcumin in Blocking Alzheimer's
CLR01, a "molecular tweezer", keeps brain proteins from the clumping, or aggregating, that causes Alzheimer's, Parkin...
Photo Of Man Sitting On A PET Scanner
Amyloid PET Scan Coverage Approved at Last
Amyloid Scans diagnose and treat Alzheimer's, at a hefty price. 11 years after FDA approval, Medicare can finally help.
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x
News, Treatments, Care Tips

Subscribe To The Weekly Newsletter

videos & articles on Research & Prevention
News to Get at the Truth

Subscribe To Our Weekly Newsletter