Specially-designed antibodies have been created to halt the production of the protein deposits in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease, British researchers announce today.
Amyloid beta peptides are the main component of the amyloid plaques found in patients’ brains.
The research team, based at Cambridge University, UK, used computer-based techniques in the creation of antibodies. This method was developed in the 1990s, and relies on the screening of large lab-constructed libraries to isolate the relevant antibodies.
The antibodies they made can systematically scan and target the deposits of misfolded proteins, then block amyloid-beta’s ability to aggregate.
On tests with worms, the antibodies effectively eliminated these proteins. Results appear today (21 June) in Science Advances.
Senior author Professor Michele Vendruscolo says: "Developing antibody-based therapies is costly and time-consuming, but if we can find better and cheaper ways of producing antibodies, we would increase the chances of finding treatments for patients – making them by design can create opportunities to achieve this goal.
Study co-author Dr Pietro Sormanni added: "In the past few years, thanks to increasingly powerful computers and large structural databases, it has become possible to design antibodies in a computer, which substantially lowers the time and cost required.
"It also allows us to target specific regions within the antigen, as well as to control for other properties critical for clinical applications, such as antibody stability and solubility."
James Pickett of the Alzheimer’s Society commented: "Over the last 50 years, advances in antibody technology have delivered radical new treatments for a wide range of common diseases including rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and some forms of cancer. While the research is still in the early stages, we are excited by the potential of this work and hope it can do the same for Alzheimer’s disease."
Aprile, F. et al. Selective targeting of primary and secondary nucleation pathways in Abeta42 aggregation using a rational antibody scanning method. Science Advances 21 June 2017; doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1700488
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