
A team of researchers from Japan found that Alzheimer’s symptoms can be reduced when sugars are averted from binding to one of the disease key enzymes, named
BACE1. The study entitled "
An aberrant sugar modification of BACE1 blocks its lysosomal targeting in Alzheimer’s disease", was published in
EMBO Molecular Medicine.
Alzheimer’s disease is caused by the formation of atypical
Aβ plaques in the brain when the molecule APP is abnormally cut by the enzyme BACE1. Thus, developing treatments that block BACE1 from cleaving APP is becoming an area of increasing research in Alzheimer’s disease. However, it is necessary to perform this without affecting the vital processes that are controlled by normal BACE1 activity.
Yasuhiko Kizuka and colleagues from the
RIKEN-Max Planck Joint Research Center determined that the binding of a specific sugar with an enzyme called GnT-III, modifies BACE1 in Alzheimer’s.
The researchers hypothesized that, by preventing this process they could reduce Alzheimer’s symptoms. To do this they crossed mice w