ARE ANTI-AMYLOID DRUGS THE BEST BET?
Dr. DeKosky puts his greatest hope for stopping the probable flood of Alzheimer s disease on the anti-amyloid medications. This really is, I think, where the future is mortgaged for us, in terms of being able to stop this disorder, he said. In a map of a hypothetical treatment, Dr. DeKosky explained that if you could, you would enhance the alpha secretase, stop the beta, stop the gamma, and for anything that seeps through you d use an antibody to sweep it out of the brain as fast as you could. He pointed out that a productive animal model for the deposition of amyloid has been made with transgenic mice that have been engineered with amyloid protein precursor from humans. Experiments with these animals proved that you could actually interfere with amyloid deposition in the brain in two ways. The first is a protection model. If you immunize mice before they ever deposit the amyloid in their brains, you can stop them from depositing in the brain, Dr. DeKosky said. A 1-year-old mouse that
