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Korean researchers are encouraging Alzheimer’s patients: a natural substance could serve as the basis for a drug against the previously incurable disease.
Yun Kwon, a scientist at Seoul National University, and his team examined ginseng root and found microbes of the genus Streptomyces that produce a previously unknown substance: it was called rhizolutin.
Rhizolutin “dissolves the protein deposits typical of dementia and inhibits inflammation, as experiments with mice and cell cultures have shown,” writes the scientific site Scinexx.
About 1.2 million people in Germany suffer from Alzheimer’s. Neurodegenerative disease progresses inexorably and can only be slowed down with drugs. Other methods, such as brain stimulation, also cannot cure the disease.
Protein deposits, the so-called plaques, form in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients. These impair the functioning of the brain. Cause: unclear. Symptoms include forgetfulness and disorientation.
So now Rhizolutin gives hope. It arises because the microbes living in the soil near the ginseng root use it as a raw material and produce this same substance.
Ginseng is a popular remedy in Asia that is used as a food and medicinal supplement. Studies also show that ginseng helps with stress and strengthens the immune system.
Yun Kwon and his team cultured rhizolutin in the laboratory and examined its structure. It turns out: Based on its properties, rhizolutin may have a similar mode of action to those agents that loosen protein adhesions in the brain.
That would be a huge step towards Alzheimer’s drug!
So far, protein solvents have been administered as part of immunotherapy. It is not approved as a treatment method and is still being tested.
Korean researchers tested rizolutin on mice with Alzheimer’s disease. “The treatment (…) led to a significant dissolution of the protein plaques in the hippocampus of the animals,” concluded the scientists. Rhizolutin prevents brain cell death and inhibits inflammatory reactions in the brain.
Now further studies must show that this is indeed the case. Unfortunately, many therapeutic approaches that were effective in mice have not shown the same success in humans.
No one can say when a rizolutin drug will be available. It usually takes at least ten years for a medicinal substance to be ready for the market.
Technical consultancy: Alzheimer Research Initiative eV
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