Cellular ways of fruit flies – and humans – help MIT researchers and Harvard Medical School have prepared the way for potentially revolutionary research on new ways of treating Alzheimer’s disease, researchers said.
In a press release published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday, the researchers said they used data on fruit flies as well as unique algorithms to discover new paths, as well as gene identification, which can contribute to the development of a new class of drugs to treat devastating disease.
Drugs currently approved to treat Alzheimer’s disease has not been as successful as hope, said the school. These drugs tend to target amyloid plaques in the brain, but the new research suggests other areas to target, the university said.
Matthew Leventhal, a doctoral candidate in 2025 at MIT, is the main author of the newspaper, who appeared Tuesday in Nature Communications.
“A more complete understanding of cell death paths should provide a new large set of therapeutic targets in Alzheimer’s disease and neurodegenerative disorders dependent on age,” wrote Leventhal and his co-authors. “Our study identifies the candidate routes which could be targeted on improving neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease.”
Ernest Fraenkel, Professor of Grover Mr. Hermann in Health Sciences and Technologies in the Biological Engineering Department of MIT, was the main author of the study.
“All the evidence that we have indicated that there are many different ways involved in the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. It is multifactorial, and that is perhaps why it was so difficult to develop effective drugs,” said Fraenkel in the MIT declaration. “We will need a kind of combination of treatments that strike different parts of this disease.”
Dr. Mel B. Feany, a Harvard Medical pathology teacher, has also provided research information whose homonymous laboratory has created a version of Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases such as Lou Gehrig’s disease based on fruit flies.
For this effort, the Feany’s laboratory identified the fruits of the fruit fly that has decreased neurologically, similar to what humans experience, said the study. Using Algorithms from the Fraenkel Laboratory, the researchers located the new field of survey.
“The search for Alzheimer’s drugs will be considerably accelerated when there are very good robust experimental systems,” said Fraenkel in the MIT declaration. “We come to a point where some truly innovative systems come together.
Research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.
The MIT and the Brown University and other research institutions dispute the Trump administration’s discounts at indirect expense before the Federal Court. The MIT said that the NIH budget discounts will cost up to $ 35 million a year.
“We oppose these cuts because they will erode the world scientific leadership in America and will deprive the American people of research with potential benefits that are unmissable for their health and well-being,” said MIT president, Sally Kornbluth, in February.
John R. can be contacted at John.ally@globe.com. Follow him @Jrebosglobe.
