Posted on 04/28/2025 7:52:43 PM PDT by ConservativeMind
A team of scientists has tested four anti-amyloid Alzheimer's therapeutics to find out how the drugs bind to toxic amyloid beta protein to tackle the disease.
Using new, highly sensitive methods, the researchers detected and visualized how amyloid beta protein—a plaque that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer's disease—binds to lecanemab, donanemab, gantenerumab and aducanumab.
The findings show that lecanemab performs the best at binding a small, soluble form of amyloid beta, suggesting that it is most effective, when used as early as possible in the disease progression.
Amyloid beta is one of the toxic proteins that builds up in clumps or "aggregates" in the brains of people affected by Alzheimer's. Several drugs targeting the protein have been tested in trials over recent years. These drugs are antibodies that bind to the amyloid beta and facilitate its clearance from the brain, but exactly how this occurs is not yet known.
To test the four different anti-amyloid drugs, the researchers generated model protein aggregates in the lab, and also tested real aggregates taken from the brains of people who had died with Alzheimer's.
The research team found that lecanemab binds strongly to a subset of small soluble aggregates that form early on in disease. They also found that lecanemab could bind at more sites per aggregate, allowing the drug to more effectively coat the toxic protein, making it more likely to be cleared.
Aducanumab and gantenerumab bind with a lower affinity to larger aggregates that form later on in the disease progression. Their results for donanemab showed no binding to the soluble aggregates.
(Excerpt) Read more at medicalxpress.com ...
I read it only delays early onset from advancing by about 5 months. I don’t think it would be merciful if it delayed later stages from advancing. Horrible disease.
I hope they start figuring more out - it bugs me when a drug ad has a small print statement that goes, “It is not known how or why this crap works”.....there’s way too many out there like that - and they probably also don’t have a clue as to why so many can also kill you faster than the dis-ease they are supposed to ameliorate.
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