Scientists Discover Potential New Targets For Alzheimer’s Drugs

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

By combining information from many large datasets, MIT researchers have identified several new potential targets for treating or preventing Alzheimer's disease.

The study revealed genes and cellular pathways that haven't been linked to Alzheimer's before, including one involved in DNA repair. Identifying new drug targets is critical because many of the Alzheimer's drugs that have been developed to this point haven't been as successful as hoped.

Working with researchers at Harvard Medical School, the team used data from humans and fruit flies to identify cellular pathways linked to neurodegeneration. This allowed them to identify additional pathways that may be contributing to the development of Alzheimer's.

All the evidence that we have indicates that there are many different pathways involved in the progression of Alzheimer's. It is multifactorial, and that may be why it's been so hard to develop effective drugs," says Ernest Fraenkel,the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology in MIT's Department of Biological Engineering and the senior author of the study. We will need some kind of combination of treatments that hit different parts of this disease."

Matthew Leventhal PhD '25 is the lead author of the paper, which appears today in Nature Communications.

Over the past few decades, many studies have suggested that Alzheimer's disease is caused by the buildup of amyloid plaques in the brain, which triggers a cascade of events that leads to neurodegeneration.

A handful of drugs have been developed to block or break down these plaques, but these drugs usually do not have a dramatic effect on disease progression. In hopes of identifying new drug targets, many scientists are now working on uncovering other mechanisms that might contribute to the development of Alzheimer's.

One possibility is that maybe there's more than one cause of Alzheimer's, and that even in a single person, there could be multiple contributing factors," Fraenkel says. So, even if the amyloid hypothesis is correct - and there are some people who don't think it is - you need to know what those other factors are. And then if you can hit all the causes of the disease, you have a better chance of blocking and maybe even reversing some losses."

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