Meet a Utah professor who believes she’s on the cusp of a breakthrough in Alzheimer’s disease

First, Dr. Donna J Cross watched Alzheimer’s disease rob her grandmother of her independence, her personality, and ultimately her life.

Now the disease has taken over his father-in-law’s brain, and he now faces the same slow, heartbreaking decline.

It may be too late for them, but Dr. Cross wants to save the millions of other people diagnosed with this devastating disease.

She believes she’s on the verge of a breakthrough after a repurposed anticancer drug caused “complete reversal” of cognitive decline in mice with Alzheimer’s disease.

“This is my passion. It started out being personal to me; that’s still the case, and that’s extremely true,” Dr. Cross said.

Dozens of medications intended to slow dementia-related cognitive decline over the past decade have failed to demonstrate real benefit. Researchers have turned to well-established drugs in hopes of leveraging what’s already available to bring viable Alzheimer’s treatment to patients as quickly as possible.

Dr. Cross looked at Paclitaxel, a chemotherapy drug approved by the FDA in 1992.

It works by binding to a protein that makes up the support structures of cells that help them divide and spread. By strengthening these structures, the drug is able to prevent cells from dividing into two new cells, which explains the growth of cancer.

The drug also activates certain pathways that ultimately kill damaged cells.

Research by Dr. Cross over the past decade has shown that it can also strengthen neuron structures that can become damaged over time as Alzheimer’s disease progresses.

The big breakthrough was when she administered the drug into the noses of mice with Alzheimer’s disease.

The drug caused “a complete reversal of their cognitive deficit,” according to Deseret News.

This discovery represents a major victory for Dr. Cross and his fellow researchers, especially given the long list of failed drugs targeting a long-recognized hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease.

Focusing on a well-established cancer drug could pave the way for a new wave of drugs already approved to treat the disease in a much shorter time frame than it would take to develop a new drug, which might not even operate, starting from scratch.

Dr Cross said: ‘Whether it happens in humans, we still have a lot of work to do’, adding that if it did happen ‘it would be huge’.

“We would treat not only Alzheimer’s disease, but any type of dementia: ALS, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, any type of disease that causes nerve cells to die.”

She would need to create a version of the drug that can cross the human blood-brain barrier (BBB), no easy task.

The BBB is a network of blood vessels and tissues that serves as a protective layer covering the inside of the brain, protecting it from toxic substances.

Many drugs cannot pass through this protective layer around the human brain, which poses a significant obstacle for cancer drugs, for example.

But Dr. Cross found that delivering the drug through the nose was effective in crossing the BBB in mice and would likely have the same effect in humans.

The next step is to prepare the drug for clinical trials, a costly undertaking with a potentially invaluable return on investment.

She said: “Even though it’s too late for my grandmother and probably too late for my father-in-law, it’s not too late for so many people in the world, which is why we We have to keep moving forward.”

She earned her doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Michigan with the goal of finding a cure.

She then moved to the University of Washington and finally the University of Utah, where she currently directs the Neuroimaging and Biotechnology Laboratory.

This is where Dr. Jindrich (Henry) Kopecek and Dr. Jiyuan (Jane) Yang come in.

The two university chemists had offices located next to Dr. Cross’s, which had been placed there simply because there was space.

She began working with them to develop the drug and prepare it for clinical trials.

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Dr Cross said: “These guys are rock stars. I came to them as a brain specialist interested in treating neurological diseases, and they are the ones who develop and deliver the drugs. It’s a very strong collaboration due to our different areas of expertise.

An estimated six million Americans suffer from Alzheimer’s disease, most of whom are 65 or older.

Currently, there is no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, although there are treatments that can delay the progression of the disease.

This is thought to come from the buildup of sticky proteins in the brain called beta-amyloid.

A brain with Alzheimer’s disease overproduces the precursor proteins that generate beta-amyloid, which appear in abnormal shapes and clump together in clusters.

These groups disrupt normal neuronal function and disrupt cell signaling pathways, ultimately killing cells.

But drugs targeting amyloid have repeatedly failed, showing minor benefits while increasing the risk of brain hemorrhage, calling into question the general orthodoxy about what causes Alzheimer’s disease and how best to treat it. stop its progression in the destruction of brain cells.

Dr. Cross will present his research at the Alzheimer’s Disease Education and Caregiver Conference this week.