Search for icy water brain drugs

Thursday January 15th, 2015

British scientists are searching for drugs that can mimic the effects of iced water on the brain, it was announced last night.

Cooling is known to protect the brain against damage - and now researchers are searching for the chemicals, the "cold shock" proteins, that provide that protection.

The British researchers say this could provide the basis for new treatments against Alzheimer's disease and other brain diseases.

Scientists at the Medical Research Council said they have now pin-pointed one of these proteins, RBM3, as being involved in brain regeneration.

The study involved laboratory mice and showed that when suffering from diseases similar to Alzheimer's disease levels of RBM3 failed to rise when the animals experienced cooling.

Reporting in Nature, scientists said they were able to artificially boost RBM3 levels.

Researcher Professor Giovanna Mallucci said: “We’ve known for some time that cooling can slow down or even prevent damage to brain cells, but reducing body temperature is rarely feasible in practice: it’s unpleasant and involves risks such as pneumonia and blood clots.

"But, by identifying how cooling activates a process that prevents the loss of brain cells, we can now work towards finding a means to develop drugs that might mimic the protective effects of cold on the brain.”

Professor Hugh Perry, from the MRC, said the research could be "an important step forward."

He said: "We now need to find something to reproduce the effect of brain cooling. Just as anti-inflammatory drugs are preferable to cold baths in bringing down a high temperature, we need to find drugs which can induce the effects of hibernation and hypothermia.”

RBM3 mediates structural plasticity and protective effects of cooling in neurodegeneration Nature 14 January 2015

Tags: Brain & Neurology | Fitness | UK News

Printer friendly page