Campus Connection

Media Credit: Laura Causey

Dr. Dave Morgan of the University of South Florida lectured at UMB on Wednesday, August 29 about immunotherapy approaches to treating Alzheimer’s disease.

Alzheimer’s disease is a degenerative disease of the brain that currently affects more than 5 million Americans and costs $100 billion dollars annually in health care.  Though the causes of Alzheimer’s disease are not entirely understood, scientists agree that a protein called amyloid, which forms plaques in the brain, plays an important role.  Immunotherapy approaches target this protein for clearance by the body’s immune system.  In 2002, a phase 2 clinical trial for an amyloid vaccine developed by Elan Pharmaceuticals was halted due to complications caused by activation of the autoimmune system. 

Newer approaches attempt to bypass this problem by using passive immunotherapy: injecting ready-made antibodies rather than stimulating the body’s immune system.  Research from Morgan’s lab has shown that passive immunotherapy clears amyloid plaques from the brains of mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease and improves their cognitive functioning.  This research was the first to draw a direct correlation between plaque formation and cognitive function, though Morgan didn’t realize the impact of his findings at the time.  He was trying to “understand how the antibody worked, not develop the best drug.”  Mouse models of the disease do not have massive amounts of cell death in the brain like human subjects do, and it is unlikely that immunotherapy treatments will regenerate lost neurons.

There are currently eight ongoing clinical trials testing various forms of the amyloid antibody and Elan-Wyeth is preparing to enter phase 3 clinical trials in the fall of this year.

While Morgan agrees that the outcome of these clinical trials will determine whether or not amyloid is a good target for treating Alzheimer’s disease, he continues to pursue other avenues.  Ultimately, the focus of his research is “to try to understand more of how the brain works, and along the way, try to identify good therapeutic targets for neurological disorders.”

Article Tools