Scientists have discovered a new drug that targets Alzheimer's disease and has potential for development as a novel diagnostic tool.
According to the research team led by Gong Chen, a Professor of Biology and the Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences at Penn State University, an abnormally high concentration of one inhibitory neurotransmitter was discovered in the brains of deceased Alzheimer's patients.
Chen said that this neurotransmitter, called GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), was found in deformed cells called "reactive astrocytes" in a structure in the core of the brain called the dentate gyrus, whose structure is the gateway to hippocampus, an area of the brain that is critical for learning and memory.
Chen's team found that the GABA neurotransmitter was drastically increased in the deformed versions of the normally large, star-shaped "astrocyte" cells which, in a healthy individual, surround and support individual neurons in the brain.
He said that their research shows that the excessively high concentration of the GABA neurotransmitter in these reactive astrocytes is a novel biomarker that we hope can be targeted in further research as a tool for the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers have developed new analysis methods to evaluate neurotransmitter concentrations in the brains of normal and genetically modified mouse models for Alzheimer's disease (AD mice) and their study of AD mice shows that the high concentration of the GABA neurotransmitter in the reactive astrocytes of the dentate gyrus correlates with the animals' poor performance on tests of learning and memory.
The study was published in Nature Communications.