Renowned US psychiatry expert Prof. Dr. Norman Moore said that they are working on antibodies that destroy plaques in the brain that lead to Alzheimer's and that Alzheimer's can be detected and treated at an early stage within 5 years.
Prof. Dr. Norman Moore, Research Division Director of the Department of Psychiatry at East Tennessee State University, who came to Istanbul last week to receive an honorary doctorate from Üsküdar University, told Milliyet about the studies that will end Alzheimer's disease.
Stating that they are working on antibodies that destroy the plaques that cause Alzheimer's in the brain, Moore shared the following details about the study:
Prevents in the mild stage
"There are structures we call antibodies that work through the immune system. The structures that cause Alzheimer's are given to mice, the mouse makes antibodies. That structure taken from mice is given to humans. When that antibody enters the body, it goes to Alzheimer's-related areas in the brain and kills the structures in those areas, which we call Alzheimer's plaques. The structures we call antibodies are given every three months. The antibody passes into the brain, destroys those plaques in the brain and thus the plaques that cause Alzheimer's are destroyed. We are doing many studies similar to this. There are multiple antibodies, some of them have been completed but some are still ongoing. Whichever one will be more effective will be put on the market."
Noting that they conducted tests on mild and moderate Alzheimer's in the first study, Moore said that the treatment will be valid for the early stage. Stating that although antibodies destroy plaques in patients, they have no effect on damaged memory, Moore said, "When the disease progresses, the treatment has no effect. Since the brain has already been damaged so much, removing these plaques from the brain did not help much. But it helped those in the mild onset stage.
When mild Alzheimer's patients are not given any treatment or are given a placebo drug, memory decreases due to the effects of Alzheimer's. But when mild patients were given antibodies, their memory was preserved. This treatment prevents those in the early stages from getting Alzheimer's."
'We know in advance'
Moore also explained that it is now possible to determine whether a person will develop Alzheimer's disease: "We start before Alzheimer's is diagnosed so that it is more useful. It is possible to determine how many of these plaques in the brain, which actually cause Alzheimer's while the person is alive. With the PET method, we can determine how many millions of plaques a person has. We took random movies of people with PET. We got permission from these people to examine their brains after they died. We examined the brains after death. We sent them to pathology and radiologists to determine how many of these people had Alzheimer's. They both gave the same result. So what that means is this: The movie gave us the correct answer as if we had taken the person's brain and examined it. By taking a PET scan of a person before they die, you can know whether they will get Alzheimer's or not. In other words, you can diagnose people before they die. Before people get Alzheimer's, that is, before the forgetfulness starts very seriously, with this PET, we will determine who will get Alzheimer's and who will not, and we will give people antibodies. Alzheimer's will not be such a feared disease. In at least 5 years, this treatment could be approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA)."
Who is Prof. Dr. Norman Moore?
Prof. Dr. Norman C. Moore is Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Psychiatry at the Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee University. He completed his undergraduate medical degree at Queen's University in Ireland in 1964. After completing his PhD at the same university, he trained in Psychiatry at the Royal Air Force in London. He completed the "Advanced Training Program in Biomedical Research Management" at Harvard University. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal Clinical EEG and Neuroscience for more than 10 years. He was one of the two scientific advisors for studies on ADHD and depression and was the investigator of many field studies.