Bruce Frankel
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Nobel Winner Paul Greengard, 84, Identifies Potential Key To Halting Alzheimer’s.
September 2, 2010
Scientist Paul Greengard first became interested in Alzheimer’s twenty-five years ago when his father-in-law developed the disease. Now, the 84-year-old researcher, awarded a Noble Prize in 2000 for his work on how brain cells communicate, may have found a target for drugs that could slow or stop the progress of the now untreatable disease.
Greengard, who still works seven days a week in his Rockefeller University laboratory in New York City, recently identified a new protein that is key to the development of beta amyloid, the destructive plaque that builds up in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s and is a hallmark of the disorder, according to a study published today in Nature.
“This really is a new approach,” said Dr. Paul Aisen, of the University of California, San Diego, told Gina Kolata of The New York Times. “The work is very strong, and it is very convincing.” Dr. Aisen directs a program financed by the National Institute on Aging to conduct clinical trials of treatments for Alzheimer’s disease.
In Greengard’s lab, when scientists knocked out a gene that produces the new protein, called γ-secretase activating protein (GSAP), mice used in the experiment developed fewer amyloid plaques. GSAP works through a mechanism involving its interactions with γ-secretase, an enzyme that chops up the amyloid precursor protein, a large molecule produced naturally in the body and found in many different types of cells.
“Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating disorder for which there are no satisfactory treatments,” says Greengard, Vincent Astor Professor and director of the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research at Rockefeller. “Our findings reveal that γ-secretase activating protein is a potential target for a new class of anti-amyloid therapies.”
While the discovery is exciting researchers recently deflated by setbacks in the research of anti-Alzheimer’s drugs, that the finding comes out of his lab will surprise few who know Greengard, who walks to work each day with his Bermese mountain dog, Alpha.
Born in New York City in 1925, Greengard’s Jewish mother,
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